Vidyo is the hottest video conference startup right now. They raised $100M from a long list of big name venture capitalists. They have 300 employees, and are growing fast. Even so, VSee is a great Vidyo alternative if you're looking for a simple and fast way to video conference and screen share. Vidyo's success is based on replacing the complicated Polycom, Tandberg, Cisco video conference endpoints with software only solutions. VSee goes one step further and eliminates the infrastructure requirements of Vidyo.
For raw performance, VSee matches Vidyo's excellent HD video quality with the bonus that group video calls are free and only requires a fraction of the bandwidth! How can VSee offer product that is not only free, but has higher performance than Vidyo? The answer is simplicity :)
Vidyo requires all video to be first routed to a video server. In contrast, VSee directly streams video between end points. This means there is no complicated and expensive infrastructure/servers to setup and maintain.
The table below shows VSee and Vidyo's bandwidth usage at different resolutions. Note that VSee requires significantly less bandwidth. To be fair to Vidyo, you'll notice that Vidyo's backgrounds are sharper since Vidyo devotes more bandwidth to the entire scene while VSee has compressed the background more.
The following measurements were taken with a 3rd party application (NetLimiter). All videos were at 30 frames per second (fps).
| Resolution | VSee download/upload bandwidth | Vidyo download/upload bandwidth |
|
640 x 480p (Note: Vidyo was at 640 x 360p) |
154 / 164 kbps | 650/ 677 kbps |
| 1280 x 720p | 562 / 654 kbps | 1554 / 1647 kbps |
VSee supports the creative processes and group work as though everyone were in the same room, while Vidyo lacks the built-in tools for easily getting work done together and is focused instead on conference-type meetings. The VSee toolset includes:
The VSee user interface purposefully minimizes the number of clicks needed to complete a task. Unlike Vidyo, there is no need to log into a separate web portal, e-mail links, or create a meeting. Just click on the name of the person you want to work with to get started. Need to consult with a another person? Another click quickly brings him or her into the work session. A single click also lets you share any application window, and with VSee's built-in annotation tools, you can immediately circle, list, point, and draw right on the window without needing to pull up a whiteboard!
Vidyo uses 128-bit AES, while VSee uses federally certified FIPS 140-2 256-bit AES encryption. In addition, VSee uses endpoint-to-endpoint encryption, which means only you and the people in your meeting can decrypt the video. In contrast, Vidyo sends your video to a server that has full access to your raw video. Lastly, Vidyo uses different ports for different media, which leads to meta information leaking; in contrast, VSee uses one port for control and all media.
Just as VSee eliminates the complex Vidyo backend hardware, Vidyo eliminates the complex Cisco and Polycom hardware endpoints. Vidyo also has great raw video performance compared to such legacy hardwares and is significantly cheaper and easier to operate and manage. Furthermore, they have a rich API and is available on all the mobile platforms. (VSee is only available for Mac and PC with iPad client coming the beginning of 2013).
In terms of user experience, Vidyo's private "room" model gives room owners lots of control over when the "room" will be used, who is allowed in the "room" and what kind of privileges attendees can have. However, you'll want to be prepared to use a separate program to do your collaborative work, and remember the meeting room is only available as long as the room owner is present.
Need more information on VSee? Download our brochure or Contact sales.
Last updated: Nov 20, 2012
