Videophones Revisited

amitupadhyay7 writes "The NYTimes is running a story on Video Phones. ...more than 30 percent of American homes now have much faster 'pipes' coming into their homes: broadband Internet. Apple exploited this situation, for example, with its $140 iSight camera, a pocketcam that clips onto a Macintosh screen for free, high-quality Internet video calls. Now a company called Viseon has taken the next step by creating an actual video telephone called the VisiFone... in a related news Cisco is adding video to their IP phones. Telcos' response so far seems constructive."

Moore

Actually, this was predicted by Moore in the 1960's...it took them a long time to get it working.

Re:Moore

The bell system had working video phone technology in the mid 1950s, began field trails in the 1960s, and by late 1960s and through 1970s they tried to find market for it. But it never really got beyond the trail phase. Even the users who used the system during the trails (for free or at a greatly reduced cost), rarely deiced to continue using them. Mainly because of the very high cost of the service.

The high cost came from the fact that it required a completely separate network to move the video signals, a separate 4 wire subscriber loop with special equalizes added to allow for video transmission, a dedicated video switch at the central office, a dedicated video PBX switch for business customers, and a lot of bandwidth on trunks for interoffice and long distance calls. The plan for long distance calls was a very advanced for the time(late 1960s), the analog picturephone signal would be digitized with a 6.3megabits/sec bitrate, and sent over the long distance network. That's quite a bit of bandwidth to have to give to one subscriber, and probably would be a very expensive call. One attempt to try the service more viable to business customers, was to use the picturephone to interact with a computer system, input was done via touch tone dial pad, and out put would be displayed on the screen.

There is special issue of the Bell Laboratories Record, from may/june of 1969 that is dedicated to the picturephone, and all technology, research, and network designs are detailed.

Oh great

As if my weekly calls with my mother aren't hard enough with "Are you eating right". Now I'll get "Haven't you washed and ironed that shirt. Why haven't you put those books away."

And as for calling potential dates ....

I can see it now...

[scrptk1d] d00d!*!~
[scrptk1d] i jUsT sNifFeD pArIs HiLtOn's WeBpHoNe Cam!
[p1mp] y0 y0 y0 post dat shit on that net!&^
[scrptk1d] w3rd!~!~!

Re:OK NERDS, LISTEN UP

And for those who can't understand sarcasm: Funny mods don't give karma. Read the FAQ. (It does seem a little unfair though, because after you've got 4 funny mods, you can't get any other mods, so can't get any karma...)

Ease of use

Strange how they always seem to be trying to make video phones. What practical advantage does it have over ordinary audio-only phones? If anything, I'd say normal phones are easier to use!

Re:Ease of use

There is something about actually seeing the person you are talking with.

When I lived in the Bayarea, and my parents were in Norway, videoconferencing made it much easier for my mother.

And video phones shouldn't be that hard to implement, would it? Just send a request over the line, to see if the receiver support some std protocol, and if not use voice only, otherwise, turn on camera if allowed...

Re:Ease of use

What practical advantage does it have over ordinary audio-only phones?

Hmm.... well, theoretically, it would put a complete end to the concept of the blind date (if it's not dead already), much like teleportation would kill the concept of the alibi.

Considering that today's youth, when observed in AOL chat rooms, won't even talk to someone else in the room without seeing a photo of them first, I think videophones are ready to be adopted en masse... they just need to be cheap enough for those same dumb kids to be able to afford.

~Philly

Re:Ease of use

... much like teleportation would kill the concept of the alibi.

I see you've read some Larry Niven. And teleportation probably wouldn't kill the alibi: his assumption was that teleportation would be anonymous, and what are the odds of that happening in anything like modern society? You'd probably need a retinal scan or some other foolproof biometric I.D. just to transport yourself to the local McDonald's, and your transmat usage would no doubt be logged for use by law enforcement, your employer, your wife's divorce lawyer, your mistress, or whoever wants to know where you've been.

You can't walk around the house with these.

What practical advantage does it have over ordinary audio-only phones? If anything, I'd say normal phones are easier to use!

The trend with phones has been one of increasing portability. Speakerphones let you walk around the room, cordless phones let you walk around the house, and cell phones let you walk around... well, pretty much anywhere.

I'm not sure if the occasional benefit of seeing the other person will outweigh the need to be in one place while talking. I think I would find it frustrating.

Re:You can't walk around the house with these.

... and yet cell phones already have still photo cameras built in, and people seem to use them on a semi-regular basis.

It's more just a mere limit to current technology than anything else preventing the idea from spreading to a cell-phone.

If anything, having a video camera in the phone would encourage people to hold it out and away from their head and use earpiece/microphones, helping to lower all those EM waves crashing through their head.

density

Our density has led us to video phones. (haha)

The evolution from phones you have to crank to videophones that make it seem like the other person is right with you is just a natural process for the technology to take.
However, the old system will most likely always have to be supported, because there are far too many automated/integrated/etcerated systems implemented right now that rely on analog phone signals.
Anywho, cool stuff :-)

Personally....

I think this is one futuristic invention we can put on the shelf.

Does anyone really need/want it? I have 2 or 3 friends with webcams. Very occassionaly we'll turn them on, have fun with them for an hour tops and then turn them off for a month.

It just isn't that entertaining to see the person you are talking to. It's uneccessary information and kind of defeats some of the advantages to having a phone. :)

I can think of a lot better uses of our bandwidth.

My opinion, I'll never use one. But that's just my opinion.

Re:Personally....

Yep - the 'videophone' is an 'invention' that comes up and dies away with astounding regularity. I have a 1927 silent film about the future where a character makes a pay phone call on one. Tele-video actually had a lot of research in the 20's thru 40's and came to fruition with the common TV system in the early 50's (all the experience and research in WWII radar helped tremendously). The videophone was the future of Telephony in the 1964 worlds fair exhibit by ATT, and about every half generation since someone has had the same brilliant idea followed by the same lack of consumer excitement and demand.

Re:Personally....

I think Star Trek was pretty accurate predicting how communication would work, in that it showed people using communicators 90% of the time, but occasionally sitting down in front of a screen to do the odd conferance.

Personally, I'd hate to be stuck sitting at the computer when talking to someone, but webcams and bandwidth are so cheap I can see videophones spreading despite not being a lot of demand out there.

Maybe for you, but not for everyone

I did a video chat with my mother and she could forget she was using a computer. She hates computers, but seeing my face put her at ease.

My friend did a conference with his daughter on her second birthday while he had to be out of the country. The phone alone would have provided a much-diminished experience for the two of them.

I regularly video chat with friends and family back in the states, where regular phone calls are expensive. iChat and iSight provide a better experience than a normal telephone plus the added benefit of a clear picture fullscreen on a 17 inch monitor.

I work with people whose English is not great and my Japanese is not great, so having another dimension to a conversation can save a great deal of time and prevent misunderstandings.

Apple's combination is so far ahead of what everyone else is doing it's hard to conveigh the difference to anyone who has only experienced video chat over netmeeting with a quickcam.

I read a story that this is finally good enough for deaf people to use for sign language.

What may be a gimmicky toy for you and a waste of bandwidth may be a necessity for someone else.

Cheers,
Jim

Harder to call work and pretend to be sick!

Employee: Um, yeah, hi, boss? I can't come in today, I really don't feel well.

Boss: Johnson! Get over here in front of the video camera so I can see you!

Employee: Uh, ok, just a second sir..., oh, and it's Thompson, sir.

Sound of much shuffling in the background...

Boss: Johnson! What's taking so long?

Employee:Nothing sir, here I am... as you can see, I am sick...

Employee has used yellow highlighter to make his face look pale, copying that commercial.

Boss: Well, Johnson, you do look rather sick... but is that a Hawaiian shirt I see under your crooked tie??

Employee: Uh... umm...

Boss: Very good Johnson, see you at nine then.

doomed again

Video phones may have a small chance in the office.
But they have zero chance at home.
Numerous attempts at home deployment all failed
because people don't want to comb their hair before
answering the phone. If they answer with the
camera off, then the callers always chides them to
turn it on. The social pain kills the system.

iSight

I own one of those cameras for My g5. It may be more expensive than regular web cameras, but it is a really high quality device. Unfortunatley it dosent work under Linux and Windows, and it is one of the few cameras that work under OSX. Its a shame that apple didn't make it easier for Web cams to work under OSX, but if you can afford it, get it. I have used it to collarberate in developing my Apple Programs with my outsourced team, seeing your developers halfway around the world makes it easier to work with them!

Awesome

Now I can give phone solicators the finger and they can even see it! How do I get myself off of the do-not-call list? I'm also thinking phone sex would be much more interesting now.... although I don't think the 900 numbers will have video on their ends....

I use an iSight every day while traveling 80%

I travel a lot and make sure to chat with my wife for a little while via iSight/iChat.

I find it that it helps reduce a lot of the anxiety of travel, for her/homesickness for me. Kind of strange, but 5 mins on camera can be more soothing that 1 hour on the phone.

And the quality of iSight is awesome. Unless there is rapid movement, the quality is comparable to TV.

My 2 cents.

mobile videophones

The current big thing seems to be mobile video phones (mainly from 3, in the uk) which seem to have flopped big time. Has anyone actually found them useful at all? From what I've seen the quality of video is pretty useless.

catch-22

"That's right: Who on earth has a cable modem but not a computer?" I don't see anyone paying $600 for a video phone when they could drop $100 on a webcam and use the free video-chat features of AIM [aim.com] or MSN Messenger [msnmesseng...wnload.com] which they most likely already use. Thats what the earth scientists [umn.edu] are doing!

Cisco's priorities

Why is it that cisco is cramming this new feature onto IP phones - one that people don't really want?

clarifier: I install cisco IPT for a living so this is just my 2 cents from the field...

Customers complain about:
1) the platform running on Win2k (bugs/virus/stability)

2)lack of traditional PBX features (yeah, they're getting there, but not quite to what a G3 has)

3) lack of support for adavanced security on the wireless phones

4) lack of a true operator console

The list goes on. Not once has anyone said "These phones are crap - there's no video phone!" nope - that's not what keeps people from buying them.

So why address the one thing that people AREN'T clamoring for?

Dunno. I like IPT, I like cisco, I think the Cisco IPT platform is the best by far. But if Cisco wants to take market share away from traditional phones then they should focus on adding critical features that users want/expect.

It's much harder to...

...tell a lie on a videophone than it is on a plain old audio-only phone.

I can't see it becoming too popular, somehow.

What's the big deal?

I carry a videophone around with me. Europe's had mobile videophone's for what, 2 years now?

http://www.three.co.uk

It would of course be nice if the landline telcos could get their arses into gear and start implementing the same standards. Who wants to put money on the landline videophones (http://www.bt.com/videophone/) being imcompatible with the mobile ones?

Probably already known & being worked on

I have been wondering what if people at Microsoft have this video phone function incorporated into Xbox. The subsidy for hardware, its ethernet port, powerful CPU and hard disk make this a viable add-on. If they really make it happen, then there will be Xbox webacams sitting on top of many TVs all over the world.

CT

A new etiquitte

We've all heard the jokes about working from home in the nude, and then wearing a shirt or using hand puppets or inserting fake backgrounds into video calls to the office. However the reality is that most folks really don't appreciate having to look presentable on what is essentially an audio call.

Indeed it's already hard enough for many folks with audio only. I can't count the number of times I've had to ask conference callers to stop eating, or in a few cases that perhaps they could try to pee quieter and have waited 'til after the call to flush.

Videophones themselves have had numerous fals starts. The Bell demos are classics from the 60's (particularly memorable in the film 2001.) Then in the late 80's and early 90's home video phone models briefly became somewhat popular. Rarely successfully interoperable they seemed to sell mostly to gadget folks wanting distant grandkids and grandparents to see each other.

Then came the broadband/instant messaging explosion in the late 90's and along with it lots of webcams. Offering small blurry jerky windows the PC-tethered cams allowed a few families and travelers to wave at each other. It also sparked an entire new market of slo-mo sexual voyeurism.

Now broadband has fairly wide market penetration, the camera sensors have improved, new codecs stream well, and hardware connections have moved from serial to USB 1 to USB 2 or FireWire/IEEE 1394. We even have ubiquitous clients like AOL Instant Messenger, MS Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger, all including video chat in their free clients.

Cellphones have also gotten into the game with still cameras now standard on many models and live cameras starting to hit the market. "MMS" is being ballyhooed as the next text-messaging. However what appears to be lagging is the new video-etiquette.

It used to be tourists busily video documenting their vacations that got on everyone's nerves. Then it was instant messaging folks who often annoying with trying to strike up light chat when one was deep in thought or a meeting, or vice versa. Or being offended at others who were accessible but not immediately available.

then came the invasion of cheap digital cameras. It's thankfully dying down now but for a few years one couldn't turn around at a party or conference without a flash going off in one's eyes and knowledge that like it or not, welcome or not, your stunned countenance was going to show up on a photo album or web page somewhere.

Of course today's universal complaint is cellphone users. Yakking away in previously quiet places, blithely wandering from road lane to road lane, standing in aisles oblivious to folks trying to pass. Obtrusively sharing their no-longer-private lives with everyone around whether we care to hear them or not.

So how will we stay out of the picture? It's bad enough with stills being taken, overtly and surreptiously, with phonecams. Now they're gonna be making mini-movies. Instead of having to take a series of shots phonecam wielders will be able to pan a room and document everyone without any opportunity for thanks-but-no.

"Why won't you turn your cam on?" "Are you really where you say you are?" "Johnson, starting next week we want you to sit in front of these lights and put some powder on that shine, you'll be taking video calls. Oh, and go shopping, tests show our clients respond well to blue shirts." "What do you mean you left your cam on the whole time we were ... ?!!!"

Plus audio conference calls and endless PowerPoint presentations are bad enough, now we'll have to see every schmoo who dreampt of being a TV newsman share their talents at every opportunity. Indeed no longer will sending out a report be enough, we'll have to "present" them too. Today's video conference rooms will bloom into tomorow's full in-office studios.

Of course there are upsides too. Now we'll be able to see our loved ones when we miss them. Also walk folks through things remotely "Let me see it - yep, that's it." And the idea of s

Universal Service Fee & Regulation?

So far, the FCC and Congress haven't done much to regulate the VoIP and other technologies which will make VideoPhones ubiquitous in the coming years. (yeah, it's coming, whether we're all ready or not...)

I'd really rather NOT have them regulate this new area in the same manner which they regulate traditional telephony. However, I'm not in favor of the complete hands-off approach either. I'm hoping to see some sanity here - we certainly need a Universal Access Fee structure for Internet connections - if we want internet connections to be as common as telephones (and I think we can all agree that this is a Good Thing for the country), then we need to do a bit of subsizing.

Think of it this way: we plan to use Internet connectivity to Vote, use VideoPhone, standard Internet Telephony, and a host other things which we pretty much are going to designate as ESSENTIAL to living in the U.S. in a decade or two. Thus, we're going to have to subsize certain minimum connectivity offerings for those not able to afford the whole thing. Look in the front of your Telephone Book to see what I mean for current telephone service.

If we're lucky and a bit vigilant over the legislation being proposed, we can get the Right Thing done: basic Universal Service for everyone, while replacing the horrid mis-mash of telephony regulations with something much simpler and easier to deal with. If we're not, well, guess what - VideoPhone is going to be regulated even worse the regular telephony.

-Erik

Available in Brazil

Funny. Here in Brazil I can have a video phone installed, though it's targetted more at people who need video conference.

But who wants it?

Sure, there may be some uses for videophones (videoconferenceing, etc.) but in general is there really a huge demand? I personally would not want to use videophones on a regular basis because I am usually multi-tasking when I speak to someone on the phone... at home I am often cooking, doing laundry, writing emails to other folks, etc. At work I use my phone call time to do code reviews, read emails, etc. If people could see me and see what I was doing, I would likely have to single-task in order to tnot be perceived as rude, if you see what I mean. Not having video is for me a convenient feature of telephony.

I'll believe in the advent of videophones...

...when every last cordless phone and mobile phone is thrown away in favor of the corded models.

I'm serious here--telecommunications has been moving in the direction of un-tethering the caller for over a decade, to the point now when people are chucking their landlines en masse in favor of mobile-only phone service. Videophones, whatever their advantage, lack even the limited mobility of a corded phone in the home -- you have to stay sitting in front of the camera and microphone the whole time.

Not just for video

Video phones would not be used soley for checking out somebody's face. Imagine it like a large caller ID, but with more features. I'm sure video of a person on the other end will be used frequently, but how about: -seeing your order on the screen if you order a few pizzas -putting your signature on something in seconds -having an instant "driving directions" to whoever you're talking to -maybe have a voice analysis system, detects lies? My point is that the downfall of video phones could be the word "video". Lots of PCs have web cams, but they don't call them video machines. I see interactivity and better info access being the selling point; and if it has a camera, cool. -shook

Sci fi Television

Most sci-fi television shows these days have no videophones. Why? All the reasons stated above. Farscape, all the Treks (most of the time), SG1, none of them have videophones. They're just too damn inconvenient when people are trying to kill you and you need to shoot at sheyangs.

you would think

the porn industry would be all over this.

I mean you would think there would be at least, one or two webcam sites with sound...

I remember, a very long time age(pre-internet) AT&T was selling video phone. $1000 bucks a PIECE. So you would have to by 2. I can't imagine why that didn't take off.

Thanks David Pogue for doing the research!

You simply assign the phone a static I.P. address, and then use the router's configuration page to open all ports, and of course plug in your subnet mask and gateway addresses.

While I agree with David Pogue that configuring a firewall/router to let in Videophone traffic is not for the average grandma, perhaps he should have thought long and hard about advising people to expose themselves to the Net like this. Of course, a person should have a firewall on all their computers, but COME ON... "open all ports"? WTF?

A much cheaper option

That $600 video phone is a waste of money if one already owns a phone handset and a television. (Which would be, like... everyone. Even most grandmas.)

Check out the DVC-1000 [dlink.com], or its wireless sibling DVC-1100 [dlink.com].

I think Best Buy has the "wired" version for roughly $200, and Newegg has it for a bit less.

ughhh

Now I'm going to have to actually put on clothes BEFORE I leave the house.

Or not...

After all, who hasn't seen me in a fairly serious state of undress in one of my all too frequent drunken stupors?

People knock on my door at their own peril, as the delivery people, magazine sellers, jehovas witnesses, et al have all discovered. To my credit though, I am usually wearing a bathrobe...
I just don't always remember to tie it.