There is plenty of news coming out of Pleasanton, Calif. this week as Polycom announced the expansion of its high-definition (HD) Polycom HDX video collaboration solutions, as well as the availability of a whitepaper produced by Wainhouse Research on the breakthrough Polycom Lost Packet Recovery (LPR) technology. The technology is designed to protect IP video calls from the damaging impact of packet loss, providing a more consistent, high-quality experience in typical public and home broadband network environments, where moderate levels of packet loss are common.

LPR is currently available on Polycom HDX HD video endpoints, Polycom RealPresence Experience (RPX) and Polycom Telepresence Experience (TPX) telepresence solutions, with extension to additional Polycom video endpoint and infrastructure solutions in the near future.

"After placing several hundred test calls between various systems, Wainhouse Research has concluded that LPR's ability to protect the video call experience from the effects of packet loss is exceptional," said Ira Weinstein, senior analyst and partner at Wainhouse Research.

The Wainhouse Research whitepaper noted several strengths of Polycom LPR technology including:

-- "LPR's performance is especially strong when tackling packet loss of five percent or less, making LPR well suited to address the vast majority of network situations."

-- "While most of the video systems on the market today include some form of packet loss / error concealment capability, Polycom LPR uses forward error correction (FEC) to recover lost data."

-- “One of LPR's differentiators and strengths is that it protects all parts of the video call, including the audio, video, and content / H.239 channels, from packet loss."