HP and DreamWorks Intro 'Lifelike' Collaboration

HP and DreamWorks Animation have introduced a distance collaboration system for realistically simulating face-to-face meetings remotely. Today this announcement crossed the TMCnet news feeds:

HP Unveils Halo Collaboration Studios: Life-like Communication Leaps Across Geographic Boundaries; Collaboration Studio Fosters Global Face-to-Face Communication, Decreases Need to Travel and Increases Productivity

According to today's release, the Halo technology was originally developed to help the DreamWorks team working on the Shrek 2 animated film. DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg is quoted describing the inception of the system:

"In 2002, while we were producing Shrek 2, we realized that DreamWorks needed face-to-face collaboration between key creative talent in different locations. We weren't satisfied with the available video conferencing systems, so we designed a collaboration solution that would fulfill our needs. HP took the system and turned it into Halo."

Halo is a broadcast studio designed specifically for business communication. To implement Halo, you'll need to shell out $550,000 each for two Halo rooms in separate locations, able to seat six people each. Each room uses three plasma displays able to produce life-size images of the collaborators on the other end. Video is transmitted via a dedicated high-bandwidth HP Halo Video Exchange Network.

Here's an image that gives you some idea of the user experience of HP Halo:

The system includes document- and data-sharing and high-magnification cameras capable of zooming in on any object in the other room for closer examination (we assume that participants will use this capability courteously and only for appropriate purposes).

Today's release says that HP itself has 13 Halo rooms. PepsiCo has rooms in its three main headquarters in Chicago, New York and Plano,Texas.

AB -- 12/12/05