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An alternative to being there
©New York Times © St. Petersburg Times,
Thompson and a colleague, Kevin Barron, operate Hyper Media Education, a performing arts company in Los Angeles that relies on technology to reduce geographic barriers between its performers and creative directors. Sometimes, however, the technology also erodes the performers' patience. This time there were problems at the Los Angeles end, where Thompson was working with another group of dancers and musicians who eventually may perform with the New York troupe. A continent away in SoHo, dancers in a converted loft waited while technicians at Polycom, the video equipment vendor, helped solve the glitches in Los Angeles. After about a half-hour, the bugs were eliminated, allowing images of the Los Angeles performers to stream over a high-speed data line and emerge on the television screen in New York. Everyone's attention gratefully turned toward synchronizing swoops and turns instead of video signals under the watchful eyes of Thompson. Videoconferencing equipment can be costly to acquire and configure, yet its ability to create instantaneous and real-time collaborations can justify the cost. Polycom's ViewStation, used by the Los Angeles and New York troupes with assistance from a benefactor, costs from $4,000 to $15,000 per site depending on the size of the room and field of view. Other vendors, including Tandberg and Radvision, offer similarly priced and equipped units that will send and receive high-quality, full-color, full-screen video in which the speaker's lips move in sync with the spoken words. Occasional users are usually better off renting time at video conference sites such as those operated by Kinko's in partnership with Sprint. Rental prices at Kinko's range from $225 to $265 an hour. Videoconferencing products have a checkered history, often boasting a reliability and an image quality that they do not deliver. The technology is rapidly evolving as law firms, banks, architects, educational institutions and medical providers and others who can afford it use it to save time and reduce their travel budgets. Tracy O'Such, a consultant at Spence Associates, an employee recruitment company in New York, uses videoconferencing for initial interviews with job candidates. "We get immediate feedback on the candidate's suitability without the complication and cost of flying them into New York," she said. The real-time interactivity that distinguishes videoconferencing from television or videotapes can initially cause some uneasiness. While it is participatory, videoconferencing cannot duplicate the subtleties of face-to-face interaction, including voice inflection and minute physical movements. Improvements in image resolution and the recording of motion could help reduce the faint sense of disembodiment, since more realistic images will make the participants look more like themselves. A typical videoconference setup consists of two modules, each of which has a combination camera and microphone and a large-screen television. Some cameras automatically swivel to face whomever is speaking, a somewhat unnerving experience for that person, while others have a fixed field of vision, requiring speakers to stay in its focal field. The back of each module contains ports for plugging in the monitor or television and the data line. A remote control governs the unit's functions, including its initial setup, help screens, an address book, manual camera controls and adjustments in image and audio quality. Most units also include a high-speed Ethernet port for connecting the module to a computer network. That makes it easier to use the system for an internal conference. With most systems, a portion of the television screen, about 10 percent, can be reserved to display the image being transmitted to the other site. The quality of the videoconferencing equipment and the transmission medium together determine the image quality and the participants' satisfaction with the experience. At a minimum, fluid on-screen motion requires a 128-kilobit-per-second integrated services digital network, or ISDN, line. Images will look sharper with a digital subscriber line, or DSL. "ISDN lines cost about $50 per month plus $45 per hour for a coast-to-coast call," said Andy Nilssen, a senior analyst and partner at Wainhouse Research, a market research company specializing in multimedia communications markets. "This delivers about 15 frames per second, which many corporate customers find acceptable. To step up to 30 frames per second, you need three 128-kilobit-per-second lines, nearly tripling the cost." New equipment that is easier to configure should help remedy the reliability problems that have dogged videoconferencing. For example, the newer equipment now stands alone and does not require a computer and software to control it as the older versions did. The high cost of signal transmission is the next major hurdle to overcome. To lower transmission costs and offer the convenience of connecting anywhere at any time, equipment vendors would like to rely on the Internet. But the Internet imposes such severe limits on the volume of data it can handle that the rate of image transmission drops from 15 frames per second to one frame every three seconds or so. Christine Perey, a video industry consultant in Placerville, Calif., predicts that the obstacles to using the Internet as a conduit will diminish over the next six to 12 months. "All videoconferencing equipment vendors plan to offer some sort of streaming video that can safely travel over the Internet," she said. Perey said image quality suffered partly because the Internet's backbone carriers inadvertently trash streaming video signals originating from a competitor by starting and stopping the data stream. Carriers predict that new standards will yield the experience sought by consumers and promised by vendors: a reliable and trouble-free videoconference.
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