posted 06 October 2003 10:10 AM            

I haven't seen any dimensions for the VSX unit so was wondering how well it fitted on the top of a plasma screen (important as most people use thin screens these days) The ViewStation wasn't perfect and if anything the VSX looks a little deeper front to back.

As for comments on your review. Well I've not seen the unit but must say it looks like a winner from a technical perspective and certainly looks likely to destroy other ViewStation sales. Which is fair enough as the ViewStation is 5 years old now. Think it could be a good platform.

Not sure about making the market grow much though. Think super simple connectivity is probably the key.

Think they'll be struggling to maintain all those platforms going forwards. Also on that note a slight correction Polycom are forced to maintain.

Viavideo
SP128/SP384
H.323 (orginial ViewStation)
FX/VS4000
iPower 600 (which was noticeable absent from your chart, anything you'd like to comment on there ??)
iPower 9000

So ignoring the infrastructure products that's 6 different software platforms.

posted 07 October 2003 01:19 PM            

These are very open questions which I think very legitimate to ask! Any comments?

posted 07 October 2003 07:03 PM            

In answer to the audio question, the unit does have a set of RCA inputs and outputs. The output can be configured either as a fixed output for a VCR (mixed audio) or a variable output for speakers. Also the internal speakers can be turned off in the software. The inputs can independently be adjusted both for gain and source (VCR or audio mixer). I’ve found the internal speakers work quite well for most small to medium sized rooms and also sound very good.

As for the plasma mounting question I made a few measurements, but just by looking at the unit I think it would fit on of the old Viewstation shelves (I’ve seen these in the past from various vendors). Measuring from the back of the bump (i.e. like what you have on the front of a Viewstation) it is 6.5 inches to the connector panel. The sides extend another 1.5 inches and you will probably need at least this much room for the cables. Based on this I would guess you need a distance of 8 or 10 inches from the front of the panel to the wall.

I just received my 7000 units, but if you have any other questions I’d be happy to try to answer them. I can say that the interface and video quality on the units are very impressive. I especially like the multi-monitor emulation that the unit is able to provide in both 4x3 and 16x9 modes. It’s interesting to me that all the buzz seems to be surrounding the H.264 and Siren 14 support. While these are both very important, I’ve found that the new customizable interface seems to be one of the biggest features, especially when working with new users.
Tom Mills
Wright State University

posted 15 October 2003 04:40 AM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Spoon:
iPower 600 (which was noticeable absent from your chart, anything you'd like to comment on there ??)

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posted 20 October 2003 02:26 PM            

(1) First, I'm glad to see that all the features of a computer based system - iPower - are going to be included in real appliances. Computer-based systems have many drawbacks:
- they are instable
- boot-up / reboot takes very long time
- Windows security holes cause often problems

However, computer-based systems had some advantages that customers like:
- very easy to share data
- easy to use T.120 data sharing (H.26x that is used for XGA image transmission results in a foggy image)
- good integration with SmartBoard

Of course - in IP age you can make data and whiteboard sharing simultaneously and independently from video conference.

(2) Now, some features I would like a (new) VC system to have:

1. IMUX as a different box. If you want to connect 4 ISDN and 1 network cable you have to have 5 cables in your VC room. Many customers purchasing new equipment don't have that much. With ViewStation you need only two Cat-5 cables in your VC-room and that's not usually a problem.

2. "Learning" remote control. If you have a home cinema you probably have one "learning" RC that you can use for controlling TV-set, amplifier, VCR, etc. It were nice if you could use the RC of VC equipment for turning on a TV-set or projector, changing the volume of TV-set, etc. Customers often sigh when you tell they need to operate 3 remote controls to use VC.

(3) Questions:
What is the difference between Siren 14 and Siren 14 Plus?

Siren 14 is more sensitive to packet loss than G.722 for instance. How about S14 Plus?

posted 21 October 2003 11:32 AM            

- phone add-in
- streaming
- a VGA input directly into the codec. (Sorry, but for myself the configuration voodoo and special cables required of the VCFX box aren't worth the trouble. Why can't Polycom incorporate the hardware within the codec and keep it simple as Tandberg does?)
- whatever else was suggested earlier by others

posted 22 October 2003 08:58 AM               

Look like you referring to a TANDBERG system which already have all those feature you mentioned.

posted 28 October 2003 06:13 AM            

Siren is not standards based, and it’s emperors new clothes technology(doesn’t it sound great , can you hear it….can you isn’t that fantastic).

Encryption a step in the right direction.

One thing does puzzle me, why have Polycom not made more of the equator piece of the puzzle. Is this because there is no advantage with this chip, I say this because maybe I am missing something but there is not anything here that has not been done before except the subwoofer(useless). My corporate standard mandates that the system platform must be widely adopted and stable I cant see anything here that suggests this new platform is?

posted 29 October 2003 11:13 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by asgar:
Champ : maybe the advantage of the equator chip is just the quality you can achieve with the equipment, which is what the end-users really cares about? (and obviously reliability).

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The Equator chip is just a DSP, there are no major differences between it and the TI C64xx or latest generation Trimedia. Atleast not from a VC customer perspective. They vary a little bit in processing power(< *2 in most cases) and price(also < *2). Overall they offer about the same bang for buck ratio. In other words, a customer looking for a VC codec shouldn't care at all about the BRAND of DSP that drives his video.

If a consumer really wanted to know about the total processing power in his codec he would have to take into account the number of dsp's, their clock frequencies, instruction set, register width, number of registers, cache size, number of instructions per clock cycle, internal coprocessors, available buses, additional external processing power etc. On top of that you also need to take into account what kind of algorithms you are going to run.
(The Equator for example, is great at motion compensation for large blocks(H.263) and many kinds of DSP filter operations because it has 64 bit registers. This advantage doesn't do as much for H.264 however, which works with smaller blocks and does a lot of per pixel decisionmaking that doesn't need large register sizes. Thus favoring processors with a higher number of instructions per clock cycle)

Joe consumer is, in other words, simply not capable of predicting system performance of two wildly different platforms based on the published hardware information(which is next to nothing anyway).

This leaves the consumer with only one option when considering VC equipment. Compare the quality, features and price of available systems. Quick, easy, and at the end of the day, the only thing that really matters.

posted 09 November 2003 10:03 AM               

1) ability of appliances to send/receive video to 3G handset clients. Since such clients's transmission speed is 384kb, they are the ideal companion for VDCs. The first company that will roll out a VDC appliance that can videoconf with a 3G mobile will smash the market.

2) better physical integration with flat lcd and plasma screens. So good and compact the VSX 7000 may be, it is hardly possible to place it on top of a non-CRT monitor. Since less and less people is/will buy CRTs the form factor of VSX 7000 is already outdated.