Video Conferencing Done Right

Wow…is all I have to say after getting a chance to use Cisco’s video conferencing solution called TelePresence, it’s the way video conferencing should be. Over the years I’ve used video conferencing products from Cisco, Polycom and Tandberg to name a few and they were all kludgy and just never really worked. Granted, you can never replicate an in person meeting but TelePresence gets pretty close. I was in Bombay and initiated a call with several people in Irvine, California and you felt as if everyone was in the same room.

The Cisco team built TelePresence from the ground up and went as far as designing the room, chairs and table that need to be used. The unit I was using cost around USD 300k per side and had three 65″ LCD’s running full 1080p…yes 1920 x 1080. That means several gig’s of data was compressed to under 15Mbps which is still a lot of bandwidth but it is so worth it. Below are some pictures but they really don’t do justice, first 5 pics are from Bombay and the last 2 are from Irvine. I really should have taken a video!