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The News:
HP’s ‘Halo’, A breakthrough in videoconferencing, is now available in Asia Pacific. Hewlett Packard, the computer and peripheral giant, launched a thousand sighs of relief in business circles of Asia recently, with the launch of its new vedio-conferencing facility ‘Halo’. One can now think of the days of frozen frames, voice loss and other technical snags gone for good.
HP along with DreamWorks Animation SKG held a real time demonstration for a group of Journalists, flown from across the world to HP’s Palo Alto facility in USA and HP’s executives from London, New York and Singapore.
Video-conferencing Background:
A video-conference, also referred to as a video-teleconference, can be regarded as a set of interactive telecommunication technologies to let persons at two or more far off locations interact via a two-way audio-video interface simultaneously, in real time. The simple and old videoconferencing can be done by analog system using two closed-circuit televisions connected by cable.
It is NASA, which used two radio frequencies (UHF or VHF), one in each direction, for the first time for video-conferencing from manned space flights. TV news channels routinely use this kind of video-conferencing for live reporting from distant locations. They use the well known mobile satellite uplinking trucks. Video-conferencing was first demonstrated in 1968.
The hardware required for a video-conference system include video camera or web-cam and microphones for recording, an analog or digital network - LAN or Internet for transmission and a computer monitor or television display or video projector and audio system for output. The core technology used in it a is digital compression of audio and video streams in real time. A codec (coder/ decoder) with compression rates of up to 1:500 are typically used. The resulting binary stream of data packets would be transmitted through a digital network like ISDN.
Some common Videoconferencing Software include: AOL Instant Messenger, Camfrog, iVisit, Microsoft NetMeeting, MSN Messenger, Sight Speed, Skype (VOIP fame), WebEx and the ubiquitous Yahoo Messenger.
What HP did?
The ‘Halo Collaboration Studio’ of HP introduced in the Asia Pacific region is a sophisticated video
conferencing facility. It helps conducting face-to-face business meetings across long distances over vedio-conferencing sans glitches. More over, it offers this facility in real time, so that the participants, say an executive of a global MNC can communicate freely with company headquarters situated on the other siode of the globe, would forget the spatial separation, within a few minutes into the meeting.
A part of this new HP technology which was tested and validated in Bangalore testified to these claims, reports agencies. It is reportedly, enhancing the communications experience between different organizations. India’s ‘Silicon Triangle’ comprising the cities of Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad has many IT (Information Technology) and ITES (IT Enabled Services) industries, which became famous for software and outsourcing across the world. These companies as well as the rising IT and ITES markets in the other Asia-Pacific countries may immensely benefit from this technology, as real time communications are very important for their businesses.
You might have guessed it, that a willing organisation needs to purchase at least two studios to serve at two ends. One had cough up $425,000 for each end not both. However, “a discount is of¬fered on the second and subsequent purchases”, a HP official is quoted as saying. Also, the cost covers all costs involved in operation of facility. HP also maintains that Halo customers can simultaneously connect up to four studios and access interpretation services too. Imagine this: HP is offering interpretation services for some 150 languages including the sign language within two minutes of the request.
Firms like AIG financial Products Corporation, Canon, General Electric Commercial Finance, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Novartis, Pepsico are included in the list of patrons for HP’s ‘Halo Video Collaboration Studio’. So far, 61 Halo Studios are already commissioned or being commissioned on its Halo Video Exchange network.
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