LifeSize, a start-up company from Austin, is about to launch a videoconferencing system for corporate offices that displays a stunning high-definition picture on a big, wide flat-panel screen.
This means people on the other end of the call are literally life-size, if viewed full frame from the waist up, and are shown in the sharp detail found in a DVD movie. The audio is rich and completely in sync with the video.
LifeSize Room, as the product due next month is called, costs $12,000 and requires a faster Internet connection than is now available in most homes.
But just wait. In two or three years, the LifeSize experience should be ready for many homes thanks to beefier broadband and lower equipment costs.
I've been checking out every new form of home videoconferencing since AT&T introduced a truly awful videophone 13 years ago for $1,500. The quality has improved somewhat, but not enough.
You know what I'm talking about if you've ever tried videoconferencing by hooking a Webcam to your computer, then connecting with family or friends through video-enabled instant messaging software.
The video window is about the size of a Saltine cracker. The person on the other end looks pale and blurry. If the person moves suddenly, the picture dissolves into a blizzard of brightly colored squares. The words arrive several seconds after the other person's lips move.
``There's a level of video quality below which people won't use it, even if it's free,'' said Craig Malloy, chief executive and co-founder of LifeSize, leaning back in his chair and looking me in the eye.
I could gauge Malloy's posture, even though I was in a San Francisco office and he was in Austin, because I was seeing him clearly on a 50-inch plasma TV connected to the LifeSize Room hardware.
The experience wasn't perfect; I saw occasional minor pixilation -- those brightly colored squares -- when Malloy moved suddenly. But the overall impression was dramatically different from the typical IM video chat. I felt fully engaged in the conversation because I could follow Malloy's facial expressions as he listened and talked.
High definition, or HD, videoconferencing is about to become common in the corporate market. Beyond LifeSize, the two established players in high-end videoconferencing -- Polycom of Pleasanton and Tandberg of New York -- are moving into HD. Homes are next.
``The stars are starting to align,'' said Sean O'Malley, director of product management for Yahoo Messenger at the company's Sunnyvale headquarters.
Yahoo offered the first instant messenger with videoconferencing back in June 2001, and O'Malley says one quarter of Yahoo Messenger users hold video chat sessions at least once a month.
The first star is bandwidth. Video conversations move a lot of data in both directions. Today's home broadband service, from cable modems and DSL phone lines, are fast enough in the ``downstream'' direction from the Internet to you, running at 1 to 5 megabits per second.
But the ``upstream'' connection from you to the Internet is no more than one-eighth to one-third of a megabit. Reliable, high-quality videoconferencing requires at least half a megabit, and works best with a full megabit.
A new generation of ultra-fast home broadband, due to arrive somewhere around 2006 to 2008, should raise the upstream speed to one megabit and beyond.
Most people don't want to be stuck in front of a computer during extended video conversations with family and friends; big screen HD TVs will move video calls to the comfort of the living room.
The third star is advanced home networking. Most HD TVs aren't now connected to the Internet, and network firewall software -- an essential safeguard against cybercriminals -- often blocks videoconferencing.
New home networking equipment will solve both these problems, making it easy to put TVs online and create tunnels in the firewall for video calls.
Video won't, of course, completely displace regular phone calls. There's no reason to see the person on the other end of the line when you're ordering a pizza.
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