This month saw the first serious assault on the ISDN videophone market. San Jose, California-based Compression Labs Inc has launched its Cameo Personal Video System Model 2001, a $2,100 box for use with high-end Apple Macintosh computers. However, while the price initially looks attractive, to get a working system requires a separate ISDN NuBus card, a digitising video card and a standard telephone, as well as a Macintosh. In the US, those first two items cost around $1,000 and $800 respectively, bringing the total cost (excluding Macintosh) to around $4,000. In addition, the company has flouted international compression standards in an attempt to keep the price down. Instead, Compression Labs is using the same proprietary PV2 algorithm that it uses for AT&T Co’s analogue videophone. The use of the proprietary technology, instead of the internationally recognised Px64 standard, is bound to be jumped on by the company’s competitors. Recognising this, Compression Labs is promising customers that they will be supplied with an upgrade path in the future, but until then the device will be useful only for communicating with other Cameo Systems. One other area where the the Model 2001 shows signs of corner-cutting is bandwidth allocation – the box uses both 64Kbps B channels of a basic rate ISDN connection, with 64Kbps devoted to video and a rather wasteful 64Kbps to voice. More expensive systems use the two channels as a single 128Kbps virtual channel, allocate the majority of both channels to video, squeezing voice into 8Kbps or less. However, this approach entails added complication as the videophone must compensate for differential transmission delays that can creep in as each channel is routed differently around the network. Compression Labs’ new product which the company will begin shipping this spring runs at up to 15 frames per second with a screen resolution of 128 by 112 pixels – lower than standard video conferencing systems. The company says that it has made substantial use of Apple Computer Inc’s QuickTime technology an extension to the Macintosh System 7 operating system that facilitates the manipulation of sound and moving images. Compression Labs’ use of this software opens all manner of possibilities such as the store and forward of video messages. The company says that this is just the first of a series of products that it will release this year.
PictureTel
Those coming up will support MS-DOS-based personal computers and minicomputer workstations. The company is also promising to make the phone work over standard analogue lines in order to provide compatibility with AT&T’s Videophone 2500. Initial target markets include large corporate accounts, communications companies, OEM customers, independent software vendors and other value-added resellers. A spokeswoman said that Compression Labs was already in active talks with potential European partners, but declined to identify anyone or say when the product could be expected outside the US. Meanwhile, arch-rival PictureTel Corp, which is involved in a five-year joint development project with Intel Corp to produce silicon to enable videoconferencing capabilities to be embedded in personal computers, said that its MS-DOS microcomputer-based video-conferencing system should be ready late this year or early next. Predictably, the Peabody, Massachusetts-based company sniped at Compression Labs for its decision to implement a proprietary system.
