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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. They also use bi-directional audio, so the security guys can shout at perpetrators, if and when they see them.

As our lives get more digitized (and more complex), I believe everything needs to become interactive and multi-directional. RTSP, as a single direction media protocol just isn't the right choice anymore for surveillance. It's good to see that the industry is heading towards SIP on this one.

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. They have a Telepresence ad for the enterprise space as well.

The Celebrity Apprentice show had the ACN videophone featured in it, which caused my twitter searches to be spammed with MLMers of this videophone.

A bit lame on technology, but goes to show how video calling is being pushed to consumers: Oprah Winfrey surprises Ellen DeGeneres with a video telephone call during taping of The Ellen DeGeneres Show. The thing to notice here is the use of the term "Skyping In", and in the context of a video call.

5LINX got this TV spot to promote their videophone service. It shows what you can do with video today at low bandwidths, with SD resolution of course.

2009 may seem like the year of the videophone to some - at least to those of us who work at the video communication industry for several years already. I believe the year of the videophone will be 2010, when you'll start seeing some real cool products going out to consumers with higher resolutions and higher video quality.

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. The best ones, which aren't even covered in the In-Stat report, have been show-cased during CES last month.

My take on the whole "media phone" trend?

• Videophones and visual communication is here to stay. And grow.
• Media phones are best served with SIP. Adding H.323 to them is nice to have, and may be beneficial for current deployments of video, but SIP is where the action will be.
• Media phones are targeted mainly at the SMB and consumer markets, where video conferencing didn't penetrate much yet.
• Media phones are not our 4^th screen. They are our new home/desk phones.
• These kinds of devices have the capability of dramatically increase the visual communication market (the other growth opportunity is the desktop of course).

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. From the looks of it, it isn't going mainstream any time soon, as operators hold strong to their current business models.

How can VoIP still be used on mobile handsets then? By making sure it is used over WiFi only - the kind of applications that Apple approves for the iPhone.

Most of us are actually spending most of our time in areas with WiFi connectivity - workplace, home, coffee shops, restaurants, malls. So do we even need a cellular network or can WiFi work just fine most of the time?

If the answer to the question above is "it will work just fine most of the time", here's a humble request to the mobile operators out there - let VoIP clients into mobile handsets. Preinstalled. Seamlessly integrated into the UI. Prevent them from accessing the 3G network, but let us use them over WiFi.

My guess? It's still too much to ask.

So what about the standalone WiFi phone? I'm not really sure if it's got any future. Maybe for enterprises, and even then only as part of a desktop phone. But then again, RIM wants their Blackberry to be my desktop phone. So there's a hard competition on my desktop as well.

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. It's merely joining a growing pack of those looking expand its efforts beyond hardware to become a platform.
...
With that in mind, Broadcom's decision to add Chumby is a nice way for the platform to gain traction in TVs or in set-top boxes.

In TVs or in set-top boxes. I wonder.

As televisions get "smarter" the nagging question is - do we really need a set-top box?

I have one at home, sitting on my TV set, connected to my cable operator. It switches between TV channels, provides an electronic programming guide (EPG) and supports video on demand (VOD).

I guess that in a few years time, this will change: I will have an internet-connected TV. I will access the programming guide directly through the internet. And as for VOD, I can stream movies and TV shows over the internet. Even channel switching can go over IP. Bottom line - no real need for a set-top box any longer.

Cable and satellite operators should be worried too. Very worried.

After all, with a connected TV, why do I even need an operator? With a good internet connection, I can stream shows and movies from anywhere I want. Just think of having Boxee embedded into your TV set - no need even to install it on a PC and connect it to the TV. No wonder content providers are already taking a Hulu punch at Boxee.

So, are the days of the set-top box numbered, or will it find other features that won't fit in a television set? And if it will, what might those features be?

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. Maybe iLook or Apple2C. I see no other reason to place a camera inside the display itself other than fixing the dreadful gaze problem.
• A camera mounted right behind the display, between the eyes of the person that is displayed on the screen, should certainly fix the problem.
• More than one camera is possible. This can bring 3D experience to play in video calls.

While Apple still hasn't whole heartedly committed itself to video telephony (there isn't even a front facing camera on the iPhone, but some believe it will soon be added due to another Apple patent), this may be a sign that they are starting to commit - which makes sense now, since the market shows signs of heading that way.

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. A great product with a weird name?

iriver is planning to take these to the SMBs and package it as an offering through local service providers in every country they visit - Korea and the US markets are their first targets.

Another entrant to the video phone market is Hyunjin's FIMCA H300. Hyunjin showed their prototype during the show "hidden" in the Korean pavilion at the Hilton.

Hyunjin's FIMCA. Great for businesses.

This phone, not yet available, has a nice touch screen and a wealth of applications.

A second Korean company came out with a videophone. I couldn't find a picture on the internet anywhere, but I did manage to grab a brochure at the CES show.

Vizufon CVP-2000. Korea ruling the videophones.

Another great videophone at the show was the inPerson from Creative. It launched a few months ago, but for some reason I didn't catch it on my radar screen.

Creative inPerson. Comes with Service.

For this one, Creative created their own "service provider" and is therefore selling the video phones with their own service attached to it.

Notice how every product these days from Asus is branded as Eee? So is their new Skype videophone. Though they placed this product in their booth, it wasn't central in their overall messaging product display.

Ai Guru SV1. The first Skype videophone.

An interesting prototype was displayed at Hitachi's booth. It was a TV set with integrated video telephony - High Definition with all the bells and whistles. Hitachi wanted to get feedback on this prototype to decide if they would move forward and produce it or not. I hope they do!

To my surprise, the camera was positioned on the lower part of the screen, which makes sense when you look at it.

What was missing for me in this show were all the desktop guys - Skype, Google, ooVoo, Sightspeed and a few others.

Although they are desktop centric, they did have a place at CES in my view.

Maybe we'll see them there next time.

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. You can call it my own private prediction for 2009.