Recently in Gadgets Category

Video surveillance is one of those huge markets where standards aren't used enough. Though I am not an expert in video surveillance, I have been on the edges of this market and its requirements in the past several years.

During this time, I have seen only two types of surveillance systems:

1. The closed proprietary ones, where everything is done with some obscure protocol.
2. The hybrid ones, where camera links use proprietary protocols, but some gateway along the way is capable of converting it to a standard protocol.

The standard protocol of choice in this industry is RTSP - Real Time Streaming Protocol. It is basically a protocol defining a kind of a set-top box remote control, where you can "select a channel", "play" it and do some other tricks.

There are some who regard SIP as a better solution for RTSP (and I am among them). Grandstream just announced a set of SIP based H.264 IP video surveillance products.

In a nutshell, the Grandstream solution has surveillance cameras that use SIP signaling to stream video from the camera to a monitoring system somewhere. Continue Reading...

Visual communication is a different thing in different markets, with the consumers being the "late adopters" in this case. While this might be true, as we're still in the early adoption stages of these technologies/services, it is probably all about to change in 2009.

Living in Israel, I wasn't exposed to any videophone ad on TV, but there have been a few in the US, which were targeted consumers directly.

Here are some I bumped into following twitter:

As you can see, Skype are doing a great job showing off how video conversations on a PC can look like. It goes to show how HD can really liven up a video conversation. However, the great part about this ad is definitely the music.

This one comes from Cisco, who is trying to move their Telepresence story to the consumer space. Continue Reading...

This might sound like an April fool's joke to some, but it really isn't: we've got a new class of phones (and screens), and someone decided to give it the (boring) name "Media Phone".

In-Stat even taken the liberty of writing a report on media phones. (free!). It is touting the media phone as "our 4^th screen", after the PC, the TV and the mobile handset. I don't believe in a 4^th screen paradigm, but that's for another post.

So what IS a "media phone"? The way I see it:

• Something with an LCD display of about 7" (or more)
• Something that can do more than just voice calls

OpenPeak's OpenFrame

I'll add to that that "Something with video capabilities (especially the communication part of it)".

Here are some highlights from the In-Stat promotion:

• Consumer media phones will generate between $4-$8 Billion in annual revenue, worldwide, by 2013.
• Business media phones will generate $3.3 Billion in annual revenue, worldwide, in 2013.
• The US media phones market will open up in 2009, with Europe coming on board in 2010.

Media phones are being released by all the leading vendors. Continue Reading...

A press release I bumped into the other day, about Siracom's UniData WiFi Videophone, set to launch at CeBIT (that's like yesterday), got me thinking --- What a cool idea!

We already have mobile phones with video telephony embedded into them. Many Smartphones today already support WiFi. And we also have a bunch of WiFi phones (mainly for enterprises). So why not a WiFi videophone?

I admit this is not the first one I lay eyes on, and it is still at a low resolution (QVGA, 320x240), but it's video and it's mobile, so I will talk about it here.

I wrote about VoIP on mobile handsets on my VoIP Survivor blog just two days ago. Continue Reading...

Have you noticed this new trend of "connected TV"?

It showed up at CES in full force, with every TV manufacturer out there having its own version of a television that connects to the internet - showing YouTube videos, latest news, stock market tickers or even your collection of photos out of Flickr or Picasa.

Chris Albrecht at NeeTeeVee  questions this evolution step:

How much of the Internet do you want on your television? Is the full web on the TV the way of the future?

I believe that while the question is valid, this is a done deal - television sets will be connected to the internet. Just like pretty much every other home appliance (OK, maybe not your washing machine...). Little by little, it seems that the interactivity that formerly existed in set-top box is moving down to the television set.

Set-top box vendors should be worried. Very worried.

Stacey Higginbotham just reported on GigaOm about Chumby's deal with Broadcom:

For anyone who recalls the Chumby as a countertop device for accessing widgets, you're thinking of the right company.

If there's anything I like about Sagee it's the amount of interesting links he sends out on twitter (and via email).

Last week he sent this one out: apparently Apple has filed a patent on a camera that is "hidden" behind a display screen.

If there's anything that makes video calling weird it's the fact that you simply can't keep eye contact.

Before you jump in with your hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars worth telepresence conferencing system equipment, I ask you to think about people like me for a second. People like me, with their laptops and webcams, which constitutes the most common way for people to conduct their video calls, and which is going to be the most used scenario in the corporate domain as well in my opinion.

When using a web camera, usually sitting on top of the screen or on the desk, keeping eye contact is impossible, simply because you need to gaze at the screen to see the people you're talking to, while the camera shows off either your nostrils or your scalp to the rest of the world. I, by the way, prefer scalp.

The original post comes from Zach Spear of AppleInsider who covers this Apple patent. I've bolded out the interesting tidbits:

Submitted in July 2007, the filing details plans for a camera mounted behind a display that could capture an image "while the display elements are in an inactive state (in which the display elements are darkened and at least partially transparent)."

According to the document, a similar, additional system could involve two or more cameras, with software combining the two images into one.  Video would also be possible by cycling the display "between the active state and the inactive state repeatedly".

• I guess they could have called this patent the iContact, if it wasn't already trademarked.

Now that CES is over and most of the other bloggers out there have wrapped it up and moved on, it is time for me to look back and ask where was video calling at CES?

Video conferencing is an enterprise thing: it fits large international organizations with multiple sites around the globe. With expensive systems, high bandwidth needs and complex management, this is how it is viewed today.

Now this is changing, and some of the indications of this change were visible at CES. Here's a collection of what I bumped into while walking the show floor.

The personal video phones at the show were quite small in their form factor - similar to an enterprise IP phone with touch screen displays of about 7".

These products were full of applications where video telephony is only one of them: you can find them with calendars, the weather, notes, photos and other widgets crammed into this tiny little device.

The main thing I can say about these beauties is that they all follow the iPhone example of putting a lot of effort and thought into the design and the user interface.

Now none of these videophones have made any considerable commercial breakthroughs, but it's still too early to know whether this will happen in the future. They can become very popular, very fast if these companies focus on easy installation and management to successfully market them.

And what were the most notable ones at the show?

PC Advisor has placed this one as one of the 15 best gadgets of 2009 from CES and for good reason: the iriver is the most slick of them all.

iriver Wave-Home.

I really wanted to write a prediction post for 2009 on the last day of 2008, but what would I write about? That video telephony is going to happen, Jajah's CTO Amichay already stated that.

So, I was more than happy when this dropped into my lap through my beloved inbox (thanks for this one Sagee!).

So what do we have here? LG is working on a touch screen mobile phone that is worn on the wrist. Its 3G, with video telephony packed into it. As this phone concept is going to be shown at CES, I'll be looking for it there.

Is anyone else thinking Inspector Gadget?

Fun as this may be, I don't believe mobile video telephony will catch up in 2009, and with some good reasons. My bet is on stationary devices and laptops when it comes to video calls. Continue Reading...