I need far sight
October 29, 2010 10:02 AM Subscribe
Help me navigate the world of room video conferencing.
After years of discussion not going anywhere, we finally have some money to spend on an IP videoconferencing system. If said system will work with a standard projector and screen, I have $10,000 or $11,000 to spend at our office, and another couple thousand for the remote location, which already has a reasonable LCD TV in a conference room.
One of our executives lives out in Nevada and presently flies back and forth constantly at great expense for meetings with various local folks. The idea here is to cut back on the flights, thus both giving him more time at home and saving the organization the travel expense.
The wrinkle here is that we also would like to be able to conference with business partners who have a wide variety of different legacy systems already installed. Some are IP and some are ISDN. At this point, we're thinking we want something that has an ISDN add-on, but we probably won't implement that immediately, as we're not terribly interesting in the monthly charges if we find that we can live without it.
So what I'm looking for is something that supports SIP and H.323 over IP and has excellent sound and video good enough to look decent on a large (over 65") screen. Used is fine, and I wouldn't even mind too terribly much cobbling something together, but whatever we end up with needs to be simple to use, because I simply can't be on site for every single meeting to get everything going.
We'll need the MCU/whatever hardware, good microphones (preferably good ceiling condenser mics), and a good camera. Which systems should I be looking at? Is an integrated solution even available at this price point, or do I need to go back and get more money allocated to the project?
My initial thought was to get a relatively high end Polycom HDX system for the main office and one of the lower end gadgets for the satellite system in Nevada, which will rarely, if ever, have more than one participant in the room.
After years of discussion not going anywhere, we finally have some money to spend on an IP videoconferencing system. If said system will work with a standard projector and screen, I have $10,000 or $11,000 to spend at our office, and another couple thousand for the remote location, which already has a reasonable LCD TV in a conference room.
One of our executives lives out in Nevada and presently flies back and forth constantly at great expense for meetings with various local folks. The idea here is to cut back on the flights, thus both giving him more time at home and saving the organization the travel expense.
The wrinkle here is that we also would like to be able to conference with business partners who have a wide variety of different legacy systems already installed. Some are IP and some are ISDN. At this point, we're thinking we want something that has an ISDN add-on, but we probably won't implement that immediately, as we're not terribly interesting in the monthly charges if we find that we can live without it.
So what I'm looking for is something that supports SIP and H.323 over IP and has excellent sound and video good enough to look decent on a large (over 65") screen. Used is fine, and I wouldn't even mind too terribly much cobbling something together, but whatever we end up with needs to be simple to use, because I simply can't be on site for every single meeting to get everything going.
We'll need the MCU/whatever hardware, good microphones (preferably good ceiling condenser mics), and a good camera. Which systems should I be looking at? Is an integrated solution even available at this price point, or do I need to go back and get more money allocated to the project?
My initial thought was to get a relatively high end Polycom HDX system for the main office and one of the lower end gadgets for the satellite system in Nevada, which will rarely, if ever, have more than one participant in the room.
Oh, and the microphones we use are Audio-Technica U891R. That Tandberg has 2 Phantom-powered XLR inputs that can take these directly. They're very sturdy, sound good, and have a nice on/off switch.
posted by schmod at 11:47 AM on October 29, 2010
posted by schmod at 11:47 AM on October 29, 2010
Response by poster: Do you know anything about the Polycom systems? I ask because I can get a refurb HDX 9004 with a one year warranty for around $6000 and add the multipoint feature for another $1000. ISDN adds another $1100, but even then I'm still only at $8100. And it does 4Mbps out of the box, whereas the Tandberg will only do 2. Does that even matter?
Is the Tandberg stuff that much better? With the multipoint feature does it do transcoding, or just rate matching?
posted by wierdo at 9:23 AM on October 30, 2010
Is the Tandberg stuff that much better? With the multipoint feature does it do transcoding, or just rate matching?
posted by wierdo at 9:23 AM on October 30, 2010
It might matter, but you won't find that many clients who have 2MBps of stable bandwidth to conference with. Polycom used to be the leader in the field, and the quality of their products apparently began slipping a few years ago, which led many integrators to move away from them (this is from before I got involved with videoconferencing). I don't know if they ever recovered, but their reputation seems to have taken a permanent hit. Tandberg's purchase by Cisco seems to have pretty much guaranteed that they'll stay #1.
(Of course, the systems are all still more or less compatible with each other)
By the nature of what we do, I very rarely handle multipoint conferences, so I'm afraid I can't comment much on that.
posted by schmod at 1:55 PM on November 15, 2010
(Of course, the systems are all still more or less compatible with each other)
By the nature of what we do, I very rarely handle multipoint conferences, so I'm afraid I can't comment much on that.
posted by schmod at 1:55 PM on November 15, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
We do both ISDN and H.323 (and some, but not much SIP). ISDN remotes are still surprisingly common, especially if the far end can't be arsed to properly configure their firewalls for H.323. You'll have better quality with more BRIs, but don't expect every remote host to have a full set of 4 BRIs.
You want a coherent system, rather than something that's been cobbled together. Trust me on this. It's money well-spent.
If the "far end" will only ever have one or two people in the room, it might just make sense to just use a computer at that end. Tandberg's Movi software is a particularly slick SIP/H.323 application. I'd suggest an iMac. Remember that the quality on your end is only going to look as good as what the far end is able to transmit (and vice versa). Generally, you end up with a "lowest common denominator" situation in terms of quality.
Let me know if you have any other questions. I maintain a few videoconferencing systems as part of my job.
posted by schmod at 11:41 AM on October 29, 2010