11 ms·

Facebook Is Working on a Video Chat Device

64 points by coloneltcb 9y ago

pgeorgep 9y ago
Instead of articles about what Facebook is working on, I'd be more interested in what they're not working on at this point. I can't think of an area they aren't trying to disrupt.
- mtgx 9y ago
  > I can't think of an area they aren't trying to disrupt. Disrupt is a strange way of putting it when they are an incumbent copying and implementing exactly what others have been doing for a long time. To me disruption means a significant change from how things are currently done in a given market -- a change that also changes the paradigm for how things are done in the market.
nobleach 9y ago
We've had the prospect of video chat for decades. 2001 A Space Odyssey showed us that it would be the de facto way to talk to our families. Tom Selleck promised us in the early 1990s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZb0avfQme8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZb0avfQme8) that AT&T would bring it to us. And when we finally got it, most people said, "meh". Almost all chat platforms have some sort of video integration, and for the most part, its acceptance is lukewarm. Perhaps it's because it doesn't work amazingly well? Perhaps its because people really don't want to have to get dressed to have a conversation? Perhaps I'm just not in the right crowd?
- xphilter 9y ago
  FaceTime seems to be way more popular than most realize. Anecdotally, my children use it daily to talk with grandparents and cousins and I see people on public transportation using it in place of telephone calls (makes more sense there because they're not driving). And, I use it when traveling to talk to my family. The issue going forward is the lack of standardization across protocols. Despite Apple's mention in the keynote when FaceTime was announced that it would be open, FaceTime is iOS/Mac only for now. And, I don't see Facebook's playing nice with Amazon's, etc.
  - macNchz 9y ago
    > makes more sense there because they're not driving I've driven next to people on the highway who were on a Facetime call with their phone resting on the dash in front of the speedometer, so that is a thing that people do, unfortunately.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Wonder how much that has to do with vertical integration. If you already have a apple device you are already registered and anyone else on your contacts list that also have a apple device is also ready to receive your call.
    - azinman2 9y ago
      It also works super well.
  - vermontdevil 9y ago
    It's iOS/Mac only because it has to go through Apple server. This is because of this lawsuit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20236114 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20236114
    - opportune 9y ago
      Interestingly, it seems the company they lost to is effectively a publicly traded patent troll
      - smnrchrds 9y ago
        And it has a market cap of just over 200 million dollars [1]. Makes me wonder why Apple wouldn't simply buy the company. They can more than easily afford it. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VHC https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VHC
        eutropia 9y ago
        If I were feeling vindictive I wouldn't want to reward a patent troll by making them multimillionaires. I'd rather sue them out of existence...
- DarkTree 9y ago
  There's also Bell Lab's "picturephone" from the 19060s(!), that despite market research showing would be a hit, ended up being quite a market failure. http://ethw.org/Picturephone http://ethw.org/Picturephone
- vbezhenar 9y ago
  I'm avoiding even voice calls, I just don't like it, e-mail is best communication platform for me, followed by chats. I would only accept video calls from my relatives. It's a very niche thing.
  - Thlom 9y ago
    But management likes it, so there's still a lot of money in video conferencing.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  One thing was pricing (back when UMTS was all about selling video calls, the operators slapped on an higher charge), another was that until recently the handheld screens (never mind cameras) were very low resolution. These days however it is all data.
  - kalleboo 9y ago
    When Three launched in Sweden, they made video calls free for an introductory period. Adoption was still abysmal.
- flanbiscuit 9y ago
  A lot of people I know, so this is very anecdotal, don't even like to talk on the phone anymore, they prefer texting. I do most of my video chatting at work with some of our remote co-workers and that's mainly because we want to screen share. If it wasn't for the screen share (we use google hangouts) then we'd probably never video chat. My theory about why people would rather just text than voice/video chat is that it consumes to much effort and commitment of time. People want to be able to quickly switch contexts and apps. If you're talking or video chatting then you have to be more focused and your phone is occupied during that process. Also I think there's just an abundance of ways to communicate with anyone around the world now that video chat is not as special as it once seemed. I tried counting how many ways I could be contacts and my list was long.
  - toomanybeersies 9y ago
    As another anecdote, a lot of people I know prefer to call than text. It's a good way to get an immediate response and plan things quickly, rather than trying to play scheduling tennis over text.
- pazimzadeh 9y ago
  Obligatory link to David Foster Wallace's prediction of this http://kottke.org/10/06/david-foster-wallace-on-iphone-4s-facetime http://kottke.org/10/06/david-foster-wallace-on-iphone-4s-fa...
- Theodores 9y ago
  Video was also the feature that was going to justify the 3G spectrum auction prices. In the UK many billions were paid by the telcos and part of the marketing promise at the time was the then 'obvious' application of video calling. We would all be chatting by video on our flip phones, not sending txt messages. txt messages were an accidental phenomenon as I understand it, something squeezed into the chatter needed for the phone to stay in touch with base station. Cameras in phones by Nokia et al. from 2005 are with this in mind, front facing, VGA video that is handled at the phone level as a video call: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N70 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N70 There is no 'app' that puts the video in a http stream somehow, this was baked in functionality, now abandoned by telcos. Yet there is the selfie phenomenon, again something that few imagined to be the thing it is. Cameras used to point outwards, now they point at the owner. I would not be surprised if cheap phones only come with selfie cameras soon, much like how laptops only come with 'selfie cameras'. A large tablet for just doing Facebook and Facebook video does not sound portable enough for what it does, 'phablets' are better on the commute, why carry another device? Sounds to me as if Facebook are trying to hard on all the failed VR apps.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  Most people I know that don't live near their parents use video chat to talk to them. My parents are luddites, so I still ring their landline.
BinaryIdiot 9y ago
I'm all for this. We recently purchased some Echo Shows, one for us and one for my grandparents and the Amazon experience to setup communication between the two was absolutely painful. First both need an Amazon account which, okay that's not so bad. But now both Amazon accounts need to log into the Amazon Alexa mobile app which my grandparents can not do as they do not have a mobile phone with apps on it so, instead, I have to use their login on my phone. Then I had to register their cell phone with their account on my mobile phone because they can't do the text message verification via their landline that they've had for 30 years and to top it all off now their Echo has all of the contacts from my phone because it doesn't let you manually manage contacts per Amazon account, no they have to be copied directly from your phone. So if they can make it so all they need is a Facebook account and now they can video chat with us or any of their friends and family? That would be perfect for my grandparents.
- ams6110 9y ago
  Why do you/your grandparents think you need this? I would never go though such pain for any kind of online service.
  - BinaryIdiot 9y ago
    We live across the country from them so we wanted to setup an easy to use way to video chat with them. We had setup Skype for them before we left but every single time they had issues with audio not working and other various problems. With the Echo Show they simply say "Call BinaryIdiot" and it works. That's it. So yes the setup was awful but we wanted a way for them, who are not tech savvy in the least, to be able to quickly and easily video call us whenever they wanted.
    - Pamar 9y ago
      Question, just out of curiosity: now that it is setup will either your parents or you use it to chat with someone else or will it remain a point-to-point thing whose main attractive was it worked smoothly for your parents?
- 9y ago
wonder_bread 9y ago
Do you trust a Facebook camera on your kitchen counter/night stand/living room table? I feel like they haven't done much for themselves(in terms of branding) as a privacy-friendly company to the point where technophobes are going to be comfortable setting these up in their homes.
- MBCook 9y ago
  No kidding. My twitter feed is full of people pointing out their CEO (Zuckerberg) tapes over his webcams, but now wants users to put this in their homes.
raghavtoshniwal 9y ago
This move (along with the smart speaker), might help put 'M' at an equal footing with Alexa, Cortana, Siri, Google Assistant and the likes in terms of media recognition. Somehow, M is not brought up as often when AI assistants are mentioned.
dhanainme 9y ago
I must say the Video chat in Amazon Echo Show is very interesting from my experience using it over the past few weeks when talking to my family in other side of the world. The Mics are so good that they can hear them from pretty much anywhere in my 800 sqft home. It would be very interesting to see how this device competes. The features i would love to have is a 360 Camera attached to a large screen. with Multiple Mics / Good Speakers. Ability to seamlessly which to multiple screens based on where I am.
- dhimes 9y ago
  The Mics are so good that they can hear them from pretty much anywhere in my 800 sqft home. So can The Others.
dragonwriter 9y ago
So,I've got a cellphone with front and back cameras, a tablet with front and back cameras, and a laptop with a front camera, and a desktop device for which I could easily get a front camera for a far less than anything with it's own dedicated screen will cost, all of which have (or have available) both native and web-based video chat software (including versions specialized for group and one-on-one use.) Whyever would I want or need a dedicated video chat device? Why would anyone? Also, a laptop-sized (so, I guess, somewhere between 10” and 19”) isn't going to make people feel like they are in the same room. I suppose if you wedded a 3D camera to a HoloLens-like AR system, with some clever software, that might make people feel like they are in the same room.
- morley 9y ago
  Cisco charges an arm and a leg for its videoconferencing devices, which are basically fancy versions of this. I'm okay with Facebook trying out a cheaper version for the average consumer. If they fail, it's their money; if they succeed and the product is game-changing, the world more or less gets better. (I realize this is where people bring up 1984 which I think is just cynically off-topic.)
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Cisco charges an arm and a leg for its videoconferencing devices Sure, and the—unstated, admittedly—presumption was that FB was targeting consumer not enterprise use. I understand why enterprise videoconferencing systems exist. > I'm okay with Facebook trying out a cheaper version for the average consumer. I'm okay with them pursuing it. I'm just asking what the need is it serves.
    - adventured 9y ago
      That's pretty straight-forward. Facebook views its mission as connecting people. Other tech companies are heavily investing into hardware for the home including communications, along with various in-house services relating to AI, including Microsoft, Google, Sony, Amazon and Apple. That category will continue to rapidly expand, the products and services will get more and more powerful/capable. That hardware, such as the Echo, is a direct threat to Facebook's social monopoly, specifically because these devices will keep getting more powerful and keep reaching for nearby functions to assimilate. Those nearby functions will include numerous social & media aspects (two of Facebook's foundations now are images and video). Why did Facebook aggressively target chat apps (WhatsApp, FB messenger) & photo apps (Instagram)? Because they were nearby functions to their core social product. It was very, very well understood that Instagram had the potential to expand into Facebook's territory, using images as the beachhead. Facebook is guaranteed to be concerned about the same concept at play with the devices being deployed into people's homes that are basically AI footholds. Today? No, today does not matter in that sense; this is all about the next 5, 10, 20 years and what these in-home devices will be capable of and what people will use them for.
Zenst 9y ago
I worked in Videoconferencing in the 90's and the advent of better CPU and processing power come the turn of the century with netmeeting, many in the industry thought the days of dedicated hardware and expensive MCU (Multipoint control units) was soon to be usurped. Nearly 20 years on and yet to see that killer video conferencing feature. Of note was also privy to early testing of Three (UK 3G mobile network) tests for video and whilst managed to stream the Matrix in the early days as a test, that never took of either and that was more due to the costs of data connections, an issue very much moot these days (least in the UK). One area that often lets down videoconferencing at the consumer level are the camera's and the environment the user uses them in and gets down to lighting. But again, no killer, easy to use consumer solution has come and taken the market by storm. Sure many point to point video solutions on offer and used but no universal standard multipoint as easy as sending an email to multiple people is jumping out. With that, I wish Facebook good luck and they do have the user base to drive this, but I'm not sure it is a feature as high in demand for consumer users as many wish or feel it is. I can only put this down again to the environments such consumer systems (your mobile say) are used in and whilst the processing power is there to alleviate much of this, that has still to come to fruition as a user friendly reliable experience.
- stevenwoo 9y ago
  Wow, I haven't run into refugee from that videoconferencing era in a while, I worked at VTel in the 90's in Austin.
  - Zenst 9y ago
    I worked for a company called TopTel, managed the VC networks for ICL, DOH and few others, dealt with many Telco's and bridge companies who's names escape me at the time. international VC and dialing the extra 0 for ISDN lines to make sure they didn't route over satellite and then the fun of switched ISDN (North American ISDN standard with it's bit stealing 56k lines over the dedicated D channel 64k lines). Fun times. One aspect of VC was you could tell if a network link (leased lines) was not upto scratch as you would see bit error, unlike network data, which would happily gloss over such odd bit errors. Other fun and games was ISDN circuits being stolen due to engineers repatching lines of little used circuits and then when the ISDN would lock up and that would often be that the bit error count hit a limit. You would call up, get the telco to test the line/circuit and low and behold it would be working again, this was due to the test resetting the error count. Had a neat way of testing lines using my 2G mobile on the Orange network, in that if I called an ISDN line the way it terminated the call would indicate if it was up or was errored, or busy. But my funniest story would be spending 30 minutes trying to resolve an issue with a PicturTel setup with some French chap and why the audio from his end was not working, turned out he was sat upon the microphone.
AceJohnny2 9y ago
Remember when we had a unified communication network? I can use my phone for video chat over Facetime. Or Facebook Messenger. Or Skype. Or Whatsapp. Or Google Hangouts (haven't installed Duo. yet) Signal and Line can both do audio calls but not video. Yet. I think with the union of all those networks I should be able to do a video chat with 95% of my contacts. When's SIP taking over the world again?
- digi_owl 9y ago
  The only way we get big dogs to play along to everyone's benefit is by force, sadly. If not then they will always attempt to carve up fiefs.
honestoHeminway 9y ago
Oh sweat progress, now we can leave all the text based internet and chat-apps behind us, finally able to identify people again not by there words, but by there colour, there pattern of speach and the wealth of there surroundings. If there ever was progress that should move humanity backwards this is how it looks.
fiatpandas 9y ago
My guess: it's something like a chrome stick with a connected webcam you place at the top of your tv.
shusson 9y ago
Hmm anyone else thinking of Pied Piper?

64 points by coloneltcb 9y ago

Instead of articles about what Facebook is working on, I'd be more interested in what they're not working on at this point. I can't think of an area they aren't trying to disrupt.

mtgx 9y ago
> I can't think of an area they aren't trying to disrupt. Disrupt is a strange way of putting it when they are an incumbent copying and implementing exactly what others have been doing for a long time. To me disruption means a significant change from how things are currently done in a given market -- a change that also changes the paradigm for how things are done in the market.

nobleach 9y ago

We've had the prospect of video chat for decades. 2001 A Space Odyssey showed us that it would be the de facto way to talk to our families. Tom Selleck promised us in the early 1990s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZb0avfQme8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZb0avfQme8) that AT&T would bring it to us. And when we finally got it, most people said, "meh". Almost all chat platforms have some sort of video integration, and for the most part, its acceptance is lukewarm. Perhaps it's because it doesn't work amazingly well? Perhaps its because people really don't want to have to get dressed to have a conversation? Perhaps I'm just not in the right crowd?

xphilter 9y ago
FaceTime seems to be way more popular than most realize. Anecdotally, my children use it daily to talk with grandparents and cousins and I see people on public transportation using it in place of telephone calls (makes more sense there because they're not driving). And, I use it when traveling to talk to my family. The issue going forward is the lack of standardization across protocols. Despite Apple's mention in the keynote when FaceTime was announced that it would be open, FaceTime is iOS/Mac only for now. And, I don't see Facebook's playing nice with Amazon's, etc.
- macNchz 9y ago
  > makes more sense there because they're not driving I've driven next to people on the highway who were on a Facetime call with their phone resting on the dash in front of the speedometer, so that is a thing that people do, unfortunately.
- digi_owl 9y ago
  Wonder how much that has to do with vertical integration. If you already have a apple device you are already registered and anyone else on your contacts list that also have a apple device is also ready to receive your call.
  - azinman2 9y ago
    It also works super well.
- vermontdevil 9y ago
  It's iOS/Mac only because it has to go through Apple server. This is because of this lawsuit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20236114 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20236114
  - opportune 9y ago
    Interestingly, it seems the company they lost to is effectively a publicly traded patent troll
    - smnrchrds 9y ago
      And it has a market cap of just over 200 million dollars [1]. Makes me wonder why Apple wouldn't simply buy the company. They can more than easily afford it. [1] https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VHC https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VHC
      - eutropia 9y ago
        If I were feeling vindictive I wouldn't want to reward a patent troll by making them multimillionaires. I'd rather sue them out of existence...
DarkTree 9y ago
There's also Bell Lab's "picturephone" from the 19060s(!), that despite market research showing would be a hit, ended up being quite a market failure. http://ethw.org/Picturephone http://ethw.org/Picturephone
vbezhenar 9y ago
I'm avoiding even voice calls, I just don't like it, e-mail is best communication platform for me, followed by chats. I would only accept video calls from my relatives. It's a very niche thing.
- Thlom 9y ago
  But management likes it, so there's still a lot of money in video conferencing.
digi_owl 9y ago
One thing was pricing (back when UMTS was all about selling video calls, the operators slapped on an higher charge), another was that until recently the handheld screens (never mind cameras) were very low resolution. These days however it is all data.
- kalleboo 9y ago
  When Three launched in Sweden, they made video calls free for an introductory period. Adoption was still abysmal.
flanbiscuit 9y ago
A lot of people I know, so this is very anecdotal, don't even like to talk on the phone anymore, they prefer texting. I do most of my video chatting at work with some of our remote co-workers and that's mainly because we want to screen share. If it wasn't for the screen share (we use google hangouts) then we'd probably never video chat. My theory about why people would rather just text than voice/video chat is that it consumes to much effort and commitment of time. People want to be able to quickly switch contexts and apps. If you're talking or video chatting then you have to be more focused and your phone is occupied during that process. Also I think there's just an abundance of ways to communicate with anyone around the world now that video chat is not as special as it once seemed. I tried counting how many ways I could be contacts and my list was long.
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  As another anecdote, a lot of people I know prefer to call than text. It's a good way to get an immediate response and plan things quickly, rather than trying to play scheduling tennis over text.
pazimzadeh 9y ago
Obligatory link to David Foster Wallace's prediction of this http://kottke.org/10/06/david-foster-wallace-on-iphone-4s-facetime http://kottke.org/10/06/david-foster-wallace-on-iphone-4s-fa...
Theodores 9y ago
Video was also the feature that was going to justify the 3G spectrum auction prices. In the UK many billions were paid by the telcos and part of the marketing promise at the time was the then 'obvious' application of video calling. We would all be chatting by video on our flip phones, not sending txt messages. txt messages were an accidental phenomenon as I understand it, something squeezed into the chatter needed for the phone to stay in touch with base station. Cameras in phones by Nokia et al. from 2005 are with this in mind, front facing, VGA video that is handled at the phone level as a video call: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N70 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N70 There is no 'app' that puts the video in a http stream somehow, this was baked in functionality, now abandoned by telcos. Yet there is the selfie phenomenon, again something that few imagined to be the thing it is. Cameras used to point outwards, now they point at the owner. I would not be surprised if cheap phones only come with selfie cameras soon, much like how laptops only come with 'selfie cameras'. A large tablet for just doing Facebook and Facebook video does not sound portable enough for what it does, 'phablets' are better on the commute, why carry another device? Sounds to me as if Facebook are trying to hard on all the failed VR apps.
toomanybeersies 9y ago
Most people I know that don't live near their parents use video chat to talk to them. My parents are luddites, so I still ring their landline.

BinaryIdiot 9y ago

I'm all for this. We recently purchased some Echo Shows, one for us and one for my grandparents and the Amazon experience to setup communication between the two was absolutely painful. First both need an Amazon account which, okay that's not so bad. But now both Amazon accounts need to log into the Amazon Alexa mobile app which my grandparents can not do as they do not have a mobile phone with apps on it so, instead, I have to use their login on my phone. Then I had to register their cell phone with their account on my mobile phone because they can't do the text message verification via their landline that they've had for 30 years and to top it all off now their Echo has all of the contacts from my phone because it doesn't let you manually manage contacts per Amazon account, no they have to be copied directly from your phone. So if they can make it so all they need is a Facebook account and now they can video chat with us or any of their friends and family? That would be perfect for my grandparents.

ams6110 9y ago
Why do you/your grandparents think you need this? I would never go though such pain for any kind of online service.
- BinaryIdiot 9y ago
  We live across the country from them so we wanted to setup an easy to use way to video chat with them. We had setup Skype for them before we left but every single time they had issues with audio not working and other various problems. With the Echo Show they simply say "Call BinaryIdiot" and it works. That's it. So yes the setup was awful but we wanted a way for them, who are not tech savvy in the least, to be able to quickly and easily video call us whenever they wanted.
  - Pamar 9y ago
    Question, just out of curiosity: now that it is setup will either your parents or you use it to chat with someone else or will it remain a point-to-point thing whose main attractive was it worked smoothly for your parents?
9y ago

wonder_bread 9y ago

Do you trust a Facebook camera on your kitchen counter/night stand/living room table? I feel like they haven't done much for themselves(in terms of branding) as a privacy-friendly company to the point where technophobes are going to be comfortable setting these up in their homes.

MBCook 9y ago
No kidding. My twitter feed is full of people pointing out their CEO (Zuckerberg) tapes over his webcams, but now wants users to put this in their homes.

raghavtoshniwal 9y ago

This move (along with the smart speaker), might help put 'M' at an equal footing with Alexa, Cortana, Siri, Google Assistant and the likes in terms of media recognition. Somehow, M is not brought up as often when AI assistants are mentioned.

dhanainme 9y ago

I must say the Video chat in Amazon Echo Show is very interesting from my experience using it over the past few weeks when talking to my family in other side of the world. The Mics are so good that they can hear them from pretty much anywhere in my 800 sqft home. It would be very interesting to see how this device competes. The features i would love to have is a 360 Camera attached to a large screen. with Multiple Mics / Good Speakers. Ability to seamlessly which to multiple screens based on where I am.

dhimes 9y ago
The Mics are so good that they can hear them from pretty much anywhere in my 800 sqft home. So can The Others.

dragonwriter 9y ago

So,I've got a cellphone with front and back cameras, a tablet with front and back cameras, and a laptop with a front camera, and a desktop device for which I could easily get a front camera for a far less than anything with it's own dedicated screen will cost, all of which have (or have available) both native and web-based video chat software (including versions specialized for group and one-on-one use.) Whyever would I want or need a dedicated video chat device? Why would anyone? Also, a laptop-sized (so, I guess, somewhere between 10” and 19”) isn't going to make people feel like they are in the same room. I suppose if you wedded a 3D camera to a HoloLens-like AR system, with some clever software, that might make people feel like they are in the same room.

morley 9y ago
Cisco charges an arm and a leg for its videoconferencing devices, which are basically fancy versions of this. I'm okay with Facebook trying out a cheaper version for the average consumer. If they fail, it's their money; if they succeed and the product is game-changing, the world more or less gets better. (I realize this is where people bring up 1984 which I think is just cynically off-topic.)
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > Cisco charges an arm and a leg for its videoconferencing devices Sure, and the—unstated, admittedly—presumption was that FB was targeting consumer not enterprise use. I understand why enterprise videoconferencing systems exist. > I'm okay with Facebook trying out a cheaper version for the average consumer. I'm okay with them pursuing it. I'm just asking what the need is it serves.
  - adventured 9y ago
    That's pretty straight-forward. Facebook views its mission as connecting people. Other tech companies are heavily investing into hardware for the home including communications, along with various in-house services relating to AI, including Microsoft, Google, Sony, Amazon and Apple. That category will continue to rapidly expand, the products and services will get more and more powerful/capable. That hardware, such as the Echo, is a direct threat to Facebook's social monopoly, specifically because these devices will keep getting more powerful and keep reaching for nearby functions to assimilate. Those nearby functions will include numerous social & media aspects (two of Facebook's foundations now are images and video). Why did Facebook aggressively target chat apps (WhatsApp, FB messenger) & photo apps (Instagram)? Because they were nearby functions to their core social product. It was very, very well understood that Instagram had the potential to expand into Facebook's territory, using images as the beachhead. Facebook is guaranteed to be concerned about the same concept at play with the devices being deployed into people's homes that are basically AI footholds. Today? No, today does not matter in that sense; this is all about the next 5, 10, 20 years and what these in-home devices will be capable of and what people will use them for.

Zenst 9y ago

I worked in Videoconferencing in the 90's and the advent of better CPU and processing power come the turn of the century with netmeeting, many in the industry thought the days of dedicated hardware and expensive MCU (Multipoint control units) was soon to be usurped. Nearly 20 years on and yet to see that killer video conferencing feature. Of note was also privy to early testing of Three (UK 3G mobile network) tests for video and whilst managed to stream the Matrix in the early days as a test, that never took of either and that was more due to the costs of data connections, an issue very much moot these days (least in the UK). One area that often lets down videoconferencing at the consumer level are the camera's and the environment the user uses them in and gets down to lighting. But again, no killer, easy to use consumer solution has come and taken the market by storm. Sure many point to point video solutions on offer and used but no universal standard multipoint as easy as sending an email to multiple people is jumping out. With that, I wish Facebook good luck and they do have the user base to drive this, but I'm not sure it is a feature as high in demand for consumer users as many wish or feel it is. I can only put this down again to the environments such consumer systems (your mobile say) are used in and whilst the processing power is there to alleviate much of this, that has still to come to fruition as a user friendly reliable experience.

stevenwoo 9y ago
Wow, I haven't run into refugee from that videoconferencing era in a while, I worked at VTel in the 90's in Austin.
- Zenst 9y ago
  I worked for a company called TopTel, managed the VC networks for ICL, DOH and few others, dealt with many Telco's and bridge companies who's names escape me at the time. international VC and dialing the extra 0 for ISDN lines to make sure they didn't route over satellite and then the fun of switched ISDN (North American ISDN standard with it's bit stealing 56k lines over the dedicated D channel 64k lines). Fun times. One aspect of VC was you could tell if a network link (leased lines) was not upto scratch as you would see bit error, unlike network data, which would happily gloss over such odd bit errors. Other fun and games was ISDN circuits being stolen due to engineers repatching lines of little used circuits and then when the ISDN would lock up and that would often be that the bit error count hit a limit. You would call up, get the telco to test the line/circuit and low and behold it would be working again, this was due to the test resetting the error count. Had a neat way of testing lines using my 2G mobile on the Orange network, in that if I called an ISDN line the way it terminated the call would indicate if it was up or was errored, or busy. But my funniest story would be spending 30 minutes trying to resolve an issue with a PicturTel setup with some French chap and why the audio from his end was not working, turned out he was sat upon the microphone.

AceJohnny2 9y ago

Remember when we had a unified communication network? I can use my phone for video chat over Facetime. Or Facebook Messenger. Or Skype. Or Whatsapp. Or Google Hangouts (haven't installed Duo. yet) Signal and Line can both do audio calls but not video. Yet. I think with the union of all those networks I should be able to do a video chat with 95% of my contacts. When's SIP taking over the world again?

digi_owl 9y ago
The only way we get big dogs to play along to everyone's benefit is by force, sadly. If not then they will always attempt to carve up fiefs.

honestoHeminway 9y ago

Oh sweat progress, now we can leave all the text based internet and chat-apps behind us, finally able to identify people again not by there words, but by there colour, there pattern of speach and the wealth of there surroundings. If there ever was progress that should move humanity backwards this is how it looks.

fiatpandas 9y ago

My guess: it's something like a chrome stick with a connected webcam you place at the top of your tv.

shusson 9y ago

Hmm anyone else thinking of Pied Piper?