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Cisco Demos Public Rooms For Telepresence 65

Posted by samzenpus
from the can-you-see-me-now dept.
CWmike writes "Matt Hamblen reports that Cisco Systems Inc. has announced the first telepresence videoconferencing rooms available for public use. It demonstrated the technology simultaneously in four locations in India, the US and the UK Three of the four demonstration sites were retrofitted rooms in Taj Hotels in London, Bangalore, India and Boston. The luxury hotel chain will build the videoconferencing rooms for business and guest use at rates starting at $400 an hour in the Boston location. Cisco said prices will vary from $299 to $899 an hour at various locations globally, depending on the number of users. The rooms can accommodate from one to 18 people."
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Cisco Demos Public Rooms For Telepresence More

Cisco Demos Public Rooms For Telepresence

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  • LifeSize (Score:5, Informative)

    by SLOviper (763177) on Wednesday October 15, 2008 @08:47PM (#25392979)
    The Cisco Telepresence systems are nice, but not /that/ nice. $400 per hour seems a bit steep when you have to travel to the meeting place to begin with. Maybe for the extremely rare instance for a smallish company.

    For our VTC, we use relatively cheap LifeSize systems. We've had good luck with stability and interoperability although most of our VTC is LifeSize to LifeSize. Still, at $5K for a basic system (plus display) it wouldn't take long to make that up. A fully integrated room like the Cisco system goes for ~$75K.

    One more note. If you're going to do serious VTC, use Masergy.

    One one more note, LifeSize just released their new systems which do 1080p30. I don't know about bandwidth, but the "old" 720p30 systems that I'm using do that with ~1100kbps. I'm assuming that the new ones will require ~4 times that for full motion.

    Obligatory disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with LifeSize, just a happy customer. :-)

  • Re:You know that this means... (Score:3, Informative)

    by SL Baur (19540) <steve@xemacs.org> on Wednesday October 15, 2008 @09:46PM (#25393415) Homepage Journal

    Not exactly. Doesn't an orgy require a few senses other than sight and sound?

    I got to attend a telepresence meeting at the beginning of the summer and color me unimpressed. Of course, I'm not very enthusiastic about any real-time technology binding a company with offices all over the world (include telephones and worse, IRC in that too).

    PHBs of the sort who drove Turbolinux into the ground (trying to drive schedules in Tokyo based on California business hours) will love this though.

    And yes, once you get the meeting established, the video and audio is quite good.

    Disclaimer: I work for Cisco, but in a different part of the company.

  • Multipoint teleconference is amazing (Score:4, Informative)

    by HockeyPuck (141947) on Wednesday October 15, 2008 @11:07PM (#25393961)

    I had the benefit of experiencing multipoint teleconferencing. NewYork (where I was), San Jose and Boston. The room had three 60in plasmas and three cameras. Now of course you can't see everybody at once if there are three people in each room (9 feeds in total), but when the left person in Boston spoke, the left screen in New York changed to show the speaker (and the sound came from the left screen); then when the San Jose (left) guy spoke the Boston guy was replaced with that person. It was pretty slick, just like in a real room where you look at the person that is talking. There was _no lag_ with sound, such as you would ask a question and then just as if they were sitting next to you, they would respond.

    The setup was trivial. When we walked into the room the cisco phone on the desk was pre-programmed for our meeting and all we had to hit was the "join meeting" button next to the LCD screen. No phone numbers to dial, PINs etc. If we wanted to share a ppt, there was a VGA cable to plug our laptop into. I understand the folks that set the meeting up just plugged in the rooms into their outlook calendar and *voila* all done.

    For those comparing this to consumer grade video conferencing (yahoo/skype), it's like comparing IMAX to watching a movie on a iPhone.

  • Re:$400 an hour? Oh really? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Ostracus (1354233) on Thursday October 16, 2008 @12:30AM (#25394499) Journal

    One 1080p Camera [$4,800] [electronista.com]

    60" Plasma [$4,014.99] [ecost.com]

    HD encoder 9Mbps for three HDTV [infinitevi...ration.com]

  • This is *not* just teleconferencing; it's amazing (Score:4, Informative)

    by skidisk (994551) on Thursday October 16, 2008 @12:38AM (#25394587)
    I don't work for Cisco anymore, but when I did, we used Telepresence. It's incredible. You look straight into the eyes of the folks on the other end, they're in hi def, and there is NO LAG in the speech and reactions, even when they are half way around the world. It an entirely different experience -- it really does feel like you are in the same room with them. The conversations are better, more information dense, your expressions and reactions help speed understanding, and when you're done, you almost automatically start to get up and walk over to shake the other person's hand. It's very hard to explain the experience here in text; you need to actually do it. I agree that for casual communication, phone calls or simple web cams are fine. But for business communication, joint design sessions, trying to work through complex issues, and avoiding travel, these systems are incredible. I was as skeptical as anyone before I used it; I've seen teleconferencing for 40 years and it has almost always been more trouble than it's worth. Skype and webcams have changed the low end, and Telepresence will change the high end. If you know someone at Cisco, go ask them to get you in to see one. It's damn impressive, even for cynical tech-heads. [I don't work for Cisco, don't own their stock, and don't stand to gain anything from their success -- TP just rocks.]

  • Re:How about Meeting In Person? (Score:3, Informative)

    by CambodiaSam (1153015) on Thursday October 16, 2008 @10:15AM (#25399439)
    I've actually seen Telepresence in action. A set of three 1080p monitors, multiple cameras, mics, and a high-end sound system all built into a custom designed room. The result: a freekishly interactive experience. People actually seem to be sitting on the other side of a table across from you.

    If you have overpriced executives that are traveling all the time, it doesn't take long to figure out how much you save in both direct travel costs and indirect salary waste.

    Oh the cost of that system: $300k per room. Even at that rate, we were able to justify at least a break even.

No problem is so formidable that you can't just walk away from it. -- C. Schulz

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