The way I see it, telepresence started as a nice marketing ploy to get customers to pay more for room systems that were a bit better than non-telepresence ones. It ended up as a definition of the best video conferencing experience possible other than physically being there. I may question the ROI behind telepresence, but I certainly can't question the experience it provides.But then there's "personal telepresence", which sounds like an oxymoron to me. How can you take a top of the line experience and pack it into a tiny laptop with a 15" display? It just doesn't compute for me; not to mention that often cheap costs more. But above it all, it goes to show you that a lot of people out there still don't get the nuances between the various options that companies have when faced with a decision to introduce video conferencing in their organization. So here's my ladder of experience for visual communications:
This ladder gives you some idea of the experience grade you will get with each type of product, when it comes to visual communications. From the low-end desktop application, that is totally dependent on your computer CPU and camera quality, to the high-end telepresence room, which is fully pre-configured and optimized.
And there you have it--the reason there are differences in the experience between the types of devices: the higher you go on the ladder, the more control the solution has over its surroundings, which allows it to provide a better experience.
Telepresence As I write in the beginning of this post, telepresence is the top of the line. It's a room that was designed and built for doing visual communications.
The size of the monitors, the placement of the camera(s), the positioning of the speakers and microphones, the size, shape and color of the table, even the color of the walls--all were dictated and delivered by the system integrator as part of the telepresence system.
The purpose of it all is to make sure you get a "life-like" experience--or at least as close to it as humanly possible at the time of purchase.
It's why you pay so much for it. And it's why people actually buy it--because it's the best thing after a face to face meeting you fly to.
Room System Room systems come in different shapes and sizes, but in the end it's about having a large enough monitor with a camera and a microphone pod; or a similar contraption for the microphone.
As the room never changes and stays in the same place, when a room system is installed it is tuned to the room itself, and the room in a way can be modified to fit the fact that it's about to be used for video conferences.
Room systems may seem by some as a relic of the past, but they are still the pillar of most large conferences. In the same way that you join voice conferences from a conference room when you have multiple participants at a given location, you will do the same with a video call.
In most of the conferences I attend, there's a mixed participation of people from room systems and from personal systems.
Personal The personal system is a physical device that is used by a single person. It will usually be tied to a specific desk. It can take different forms that will provide slightly different functionality. The main types you will find are the videophones, which are essentially desk phones that double as video phones; and the LCD video monitors, which are PC monitors that double as video systems--like the SCOPIA VC240 that my company offers.
These systems are still in control of the device, knowing its type and shape, and having full control over what is running in the system and what isn't - this allows them to provide consistent user experience and performance.
Desktop The desktop system is a software client that is installed on a laptop or a PC. It is something that is getting better every year and provides really good user experience on a powerful enough machine.
It provides a good personal solution that is easily deployed and cheap if you intend on providing a video endpoint to all employees in the organization.
The problem with software is that it' software--it needs to be managed and maintained. It is susceptible to a lot more mistakes from the user or the surroundings it operates in.
Final note about High Definition I haven't mentioned high definition in any of these categories simply because this is the current state of our industry--today's high definition systems don't cost much more than lower resolutions and sometimes they can cost even less.
In each of the steps on this ladder you will find different products with varying quality. Moving from one step in the ladder to the other brings a change in the experience that you can expect to achieve.
