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If you have been reading my thoughts here on the blog for some time now, you might be aware that I am a real supporter of hardware-based video telephony: I believe that if you truly want to do High Definition video calling, you must have a physical terminal and not a software client on your PC.

Well, in the past few weeks I had my doubts about that statement above – PCs are getting cheaper all the time and their processing power is increasing, so why not just base our video conferencing infrastructure on software based clients? After all, we are already doing that with SCOPIA Desktop, so what’s the harm in going further with it?

So as I usually do when I have doubts (which is quite common), I decided to try and throw them at a few of my colleagues – in and out of RADVISION – people that have worked with software-based video solutions and with hardware-based ones. Here are a few concepts that I’ve come to realize and solidify for myself.

PC Based Operating Systems Are Not Good At Real-Time

This is something we all know already: if you’re using a desktop OS – Windows or other, then performance tends to vary. Your antivirus, VPN client and a myriad of other processes that “run in the background” will cause your PC to “freeze” every once in a while.

To give an example, while I am writing this post, I have 80 processes running, taking up together 2.4 Gigabyte of RAM. This includes 4 different Word windows, a Firefox with 7 tabs opened, Outlook, TweetDeck, 4 Windows Explorer windows and Notepad++. Now think how much background noise my own system is producing – things that can definitely affect a real-time, CPU intensive application such as video conferencing.

Looking at it the other way around, when I’ll actually be in an HD video call, I probably won’t be able to use anything else on my PC at the same time in a reasonable way – my CPU and memory will be overused by this single application – not the experience I have in mind for video conferencing.

Intel Quad Core You Say? Doesn’t Cut It

This is a nice one. People come up and say how the Intel Quad core is so blazingly fast and powerful, but truth be told – it’s not enough for video calling. You can do 720p at 30 frames per second with it, but again – it will tax your CPU in a way that will render it useless for anything else. And as you will want to do 1080p one day – it won’t take you there. Sorry.

And even if it did work – how many people out there are going to have an Intel Quad core to use by the end of 2010? Not that many.

The next generation of processors? Maybe. Probably not yet.

Peripherals

There’s the story of peripherals that I’ve touched on before. So I won’t go into details here, just remind you all that you will need to go out there, search for a good webcam that is suitable for video conferencing, add to that the speakers and a microphone, etc.

There’s the added hassle of a DIY system.

Full HD Is Not The End of The Road

This one is the most important one I think. I always tend to think that 1080p is the end of the road – no need to go overboard and try to do larger resolutions. I still hold that view, but as Sagee already stated, we are moving towards 3D systems, where the video experience is going to migrate from a flat one to a 3 dimensional one – this requires more processing power yet again. And will that be the end of it? I’m not sure, but I get the feeling there will be other technologies waiting just around the corner. Each of these new technologies will require processing power that is greater than the previous generation of video conferencing equipment.

Will a general purpose CPU be able to play this catch up game? It wasn’t able to up until now, so why would it be any different moving forward? Will people be comfortable enough with the systems they have? Maybe, but we’re only starting to see desktop video conferencing being accepted by people, so my guess is that it will take a few more years for it to get to the level that people will think of it as a replacement for a hardware terminal.

Most of the World Isn’t Connected Through the PC

Guess what? Desktop computers are slowing down in sales. They have peaked.

Oh, and Laptops? On the same road, due to Netbooks.

People have a lot more consumer electronic devices than PCs. To me this means that the majority of the computing devices out there are not PCs. It also means that hardware based video solutions might be a lot more interesting to most people than a software based client.

As prices of hardware based video conferencing endpoints go down, so will the reason to opt for a software based client that offers an inferior user experience.

My Takeaway?

Video conferencing is no different than home furniture – you can go buy your furniture at IKEA or one of the many DIY chains out there, or you can go to a carpenter. My wife and I used IKEA furniture in our rented apartment, but the moment we moved to a place of our own we “invested” in real furniture and went to a carpenter for that.

So yes, you can do video conferencing on a PC using a software client – it will definitely work, and if you’re on the go with your laptop and need to connect to that important conference call you have from your hotel room, or just want to talk to your kids and see them – it will be the best experience. But if you’re going to need that on a daily basis, for professional work – don’t settle for less than the real thing. Use a hardware solution.