Tag Archives: hd video calling

Back to the enterprise

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Cisco’s foray into the consumer market has proved too challenging for the networking giant. This morning, Cisco Systems announced that it would cut 550 jobs as part of its plan to exit some of its consumer business.

This includes closing the video recording device division which manufactures the once-great Flip cameras that recorded high-definition videos on the device which were easily transferred to the computer and easily shared on the internet. It seems that consumers are turning to their iPhone and Android smartphones for the video recording function rather than carrying a separate Flip device for this purpose.

The Flip video recording device (Source: CNET)

Cisco will also be shifting marketing priorities of the Umi home high-definition telepresence systems to the corporate segment where it is easier to market and charge for. It will be interesting for us in the video collaboration space to see how Cisco integrates the Umi into its existing business telepresence line while taking on the likes of Polycom and HP.

I think that the demise of Flip and the repositioning of the Umi are signs that people just don’t want an additional piece of hardware to do what their existing devices can do. In the case of the Flip, smartphones do a great job with video recording. And in the case of the Umi, software solutions like Skype and ours at VSee do a great job at offering high quality video calling without the need to invest in additional hardware. In fact, we offer free 720p HD video calling for personal users!

Alas, so long Flip, you were once great and glorious and you will be remembered.

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Skype Alternative – VSee

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When people ask me how VSee compares to the other solutions in the marketplace, I’ll often say that VSee has the video quality of Polycom or Tandberg, the collaboration features of WebEx or Sametime, and the simplicity of Skype.  I’ll stand by that analysis, but Skype does pretty well on the quality front as well – a topic that I’ll explore further here.

Skype is clearly oriented towards the consumer who wants to make cheap (or free) calls to far away places.  Not only does this mean it can dispense with a lot of business features such as application sharing, but it can take a more casual attitude towards the network it connects to.  In a business environment, that network and its connection to the Internet is shared with one’s co-workers.  If one user takes all of the available bandwidth, that person potentially could have a superior audio and video experience, but it that experience might be at the expense of other employees and it could disrupt mission-critical applications.  On the other hand, a home user has only to contend with neighbors and (if things get really bad) the cable company.

Recently, one of our customers noted that while he used VSee at work, his relatives preferred the audio and video of Skype, so I decided to have a look.

I made some VSee and Skype calls to colleagues in various parts of the world – as near as Pittsburgh and far as China.  Compared to the default settings of VSee, the audio and video were quite good.  If I had been using them on alternate days I might not have noticed, but side-by-side Skype appeared to have a slight edge.  So I decided to fire up Perfmon and have a look at the bandwidth that was being consumed.  The results were very interesting.  On average, Skype used about 500 kbits/sec, compared to VSee’s 120 kbits/sec.  Given that vast disparity, it was no surprise that Skype looked better, although not by much.  I told VSee to use high resolution video (640×480) which increased VSee’s usage to about 200 kbits/sec.  At that speed, VSee looked significantly better.  See for yourself (click on the image to see the full-size version):

Skype video quality

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So Skype took advantage of its consumer focus to grab more of the available bandwidth, but if one wants a better picture, VSee can still do better at any given data rate.