Voice Over IP (VoIP) and Video over IP (VoIP)?

Question

Thechlology has changed, new doors have opened, and it's time to bring back ideas that where too early for their time. Not too long ago, there where several companies involved in VideoPhone, it did no work, why? Because the communication lines where too slow (small bandwidth). Now, we have Cable, and DSL with very high speed available to most residents. VoIP has also improved significantly over those bandwidth, so why not go to the next step and add the video? There are already planty of VoIP phones, a simple modification and adding a small screen (the same ones used for digital cameras) and a small camera (similar to the ones used in PC cameras) and syncronizing the image with the voice and sending it with the same packet of voice. Why can't we go there? I would jump into that venture.

Answer 1

There are already Video over IP services. Many Voip carriers offer it as H.323 video protocols. I believe most of the issue is license codec and bandwidth but with open source systems such as Asterisk/TrixBox you can do Video over IP very well.

The protocol is device independant so if your input supports h.323 it should scale pretty well with whatever software/pbx solution you implement.

I have done very high bandwidth internal conference h.323 internally and compressed ISDN channels for satellite offices and it works great. There are software "reflectors" that can do it independantly but as you stated a standardized PBX solution for internal business and branch office use is probably the best route to go.

Answer 2

You are a bit late already.

The holy grail is uninterrupted, DVD quality (now HD as well) services that are for televisions. Those small frame and stuttering videos on chat rooms are for geeks and college students and not for family consumption and fee generation. The other requirement is interactivity, ie, users can order his entertainments via the remote. Watching video on PC is not regarded as mainstream.

The bandwidth required to carry compressed interactive video (standard and HD), whether it is via cable or broadband is too large for most infrastructure. There are several parts of the whole ecosystem that must come together and we are not there.

Consumers know what to expect from their TVs so that is the quality of service (QoS). Anything that requires a computer and complex operations can't cut it. Everybody wants to take that monthly fee from cable.

I know because I have been in this business.