[I talk a lot here about visual communications, but with all due respect to video there's also audio involved in the experience, and it should not be taken lightly. This is why I have asked Ilan Malka to list a few relevant audio algorithms that are commonly used in VoIP, especially in video conferencing.] There are a lot of algorithms out there for audio processing. Some of them are more straightforward than others, such as AEC or AGC; but if
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By guest | June 3rd, 2010 | Filed under Technology
[We're still in the cameras part of our Designing Hardware for HD series. Be sure to check it out!] [This time, I've asked Fabrizio Ghetti, Video System Engineer in our Italian R&D center, to provide a short list of requirements to look for when shopping around for endpoint cameras.] When you go out to shop for a camera for your hardware endpoint design, you will be looking at a lot of brochures showing different specifications. Even if
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By guest | March 3rd, 2010 | Filed under HD VoIP
Most of the time we try to obey the 3 Bs: Better, Bigger, Bolder. This is also true for our marketing activities, as well as for our blog posts. But here’s a little secret I can tell you about our industry (and not just it): when it’s time to walk the walk, we are all slaves of the almighty RFP. As our industry caters mainly for large enterprises and government agencies, a lot of the deals out there are won
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | February 25th, 2010 | Filed under Technology
[This post is part of our Designing Hardware for HD series. Be sure to check it out!] In the last two posts of this series, I’ve dealt with the layouts required for a videophone. In these posts, I’ve shown the range of different layouts that are used in today’s video conferencing terminals, and I’ve even hinted that scaling (up and down) the video streams is often required to support the various layouts. I’d like to elaborate a bit further in
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | December 14th, 2009 | Filed under HD VoIP
[This post is taking part in our Designing Hardware for HD series. Be sure to check it out!] Last week I tried to cover the video inputs and outputs, which are necessary in videophone design. This time I want to talk about what types of video feeds you would want to see on your monitor(s) and how they would be displayed. The Basics Let’s start with the basics. I’ll assume you have a monitor that supports 720p resolution for the
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | November 30th, 2009 | Filed under HD VoIP
I am definitely not a gadget freak – the mobile phone I use is the corporate Nokia 6120 classic and I am happy with it (!!!), but I am a workaholic – so, at home, my laptop is always open, the VPN is always connected, and I check my corporate email account frequently. Why am I telling you that about myself? Because some people think WiFi VoIP is going to replace 3G calling. Michael Graves, for instance, thinks DECT is
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | November 5th, 2009 | Filed under Technology
You’d think that when my pal Sagee finally got two whitepapers on SVC that he worked on for quite some time published, he would run and tell his friends about it (or at least mention it on his blog). Well, he didn’t – the only thing he did was let his twitter followers know. I, however, decided I should let my readers know about these whitepapers as both are a good read. “The SVC Whitepaper” The first whitepaper to read
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | October 12th, 2009 | Filed under Technology
Mobile VoIP is probably going to be trumped down by IMS. It’s only a matter of time. When carriers will see VoIP as a real opportunity, they will embrace it, and that embrace will be in the form of IMS. While that is true, I believe we’re still a few years before mobile VoIP will be interesting enough for carriers. But don’t take my word on it – ask a better: Martin Sauter. In a recent post of his, Martin
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 29th, 2009 | Filed under Technology
There’s a fashionable hype lately all around HD Voice, up to the point of “marrying” it with other technologies that make a lot of sense to us “techies”. But I must ask a “dirty” question: where the hell is the incentive for the consumer market? HD Voice does improve voice quality. I’ve used it at work. It sounds differently. You don’t want to go back to the crappy systems we have today on our mobiles and in our homes.
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By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 17th, 2009 | Filed under Clients
Video conferencing has been around for a long time – I should know, working at RADVISION for over a decade. It had been fun times, with lots of development and features being added. Then came HD – be it HD video or voice, increasing the quality (and experience) of a call dramatically. And then what? The hard truth is that for the last couple of years there is no real innovation in the video conferencing industry. Yeah, we talk about moving from 720p to 1080p, moving from 30 frames per second to 60 frames per second, adding another camera, adding more screens. But really – who cares? We’re marketing and selling the same solution we did years ago. It’s a bit faster, maybe a bit better, but that’s all. The margins companies make on video conferencing endpoints are diminishing yearly. The way to keep the pricing today Is to increase the video resolution. But there’s just so much you can charge for more resolution – we’ve already reached the point where it makes no sense to invest further. The open question to our industry is: what’s next? What will be the next innovation that will drive our niche and maybe, just maybe, bring it to the critical mass I’ve been told exist just around the corner.
By Tsahi Levent-Levi | September 7th, 2009 | Filed under Technology
