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Mobile Videophone
alecbrown writes: "Orange, a mobile phone service in the UK is about to release a Mobile Videophone coming out in 2001. As far as I know it uses Microsoft's PocketPC platform, and works on GSM1800, since as Orange has a HSCSD service and no GPRS service yet it is probably based on the former technology. I hate to think how expensive calls will be on that."
Here are still images of the Videophone for those of you annoyed with the scanning Flash images.
http://www.warnerve.net/cam/index.html
Enjoy
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Fred Ackermann
e-mail: fred@warnerve.net
homepage: www.warnerve.net
mobile: 0402 293 572
Fred Ackermann
e-mail: fred@warnerve.net
homepage: www.warnerve.net
mobile: 0402 293 572
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Remember that story (maybe someone still has a link ...) about pictures from a tech show in Japan. There were lots of these, and they looked better, with the cameras mounted in the center of the phone rather than hanging off the edge like this one. Wait awhile and we'll see plenty more ... and better.
Unfortunately, this isn't the Jetsons. We can't press a button to have fake perfect clothing and hair drop down in front of us so that our boss doesn't see how dishelved we look in real life.
Personally, I don't think this will catch on for a while. Similar innovations have been available throughout corporate America for years now, yet have failed to become the standard. Like webcams, I suspect this will be a device best marketted to the sex industry at first.
All good points, but I think PC video has suffered different problems from what could be implemented over a wireless network:
#1 PC video is too difficult to setup and configure. There is little chance of getting your grandmother to get a video session up on her PC. Wireless devices will be preconfigured and nothing to plug-in. Airwaves go anywhere.
#2 PC video uses internet for data transmission. This lacks QOS and quality is very variable. Wireless networks will go over dedicated lines and have a minimum QOS or the call won't go through. You will have to pay for it, though.
#3 PC video is too big of a platform. How can you ensure quality when a user might be using a super shitty camera over a modem with a 486? Wireless devices will have a fixed platform so you can always be sure the other side can receive and decode the signal.
#4 PC video only allows people to share "bedroom" experiences. Wireless will let you share any aspect of your life.. take it to a wedding, a bar, etc. This makes the devices very marketable.
Why it may be a while, I think there will be an inevitable convergence of video cameras, digital camera, cell phones, and pdas into one device.
-- Virtual Windows Project
TheReverand Signal_11 both
So, did you take it up with the Slashdot crew and if so what did they say? Or are you guys just trolling us again?
Look, if this really happened I think you should raise hell, but if you plan to post offtopic stuff to the stories the least you could do is make an effort to gather all the possible proof.
Phil Garnier
Essentially its a Windows CE PDA with a camera on top. Its not particularly inovative or interesting in the sense that orange are doing anything new - except increasing the available bandwidth and packaging up something (that pretty much uses off the shelf components) and selling it (based on Orange's behaviour here in the UK in the past) for quite a pretty penny. We don't need a proprietary solution to video phones - this is just another way for one of the big telecoms companies in the UK to try to maintain a strangehold over anything going across their network. I'll be waiting until the costs come down, and there are more open solutions.
Is this building upon the resounding success of land-line and Internet videophones and hoping to lure all those people accustomed to this kind of communication over to the wireless world...?
When I worked at Lucent I worked in a Bell Labs group that did R&D into Internet video (among other things), and we also had a partnership with PictureTel. Not only was there little luck selling the PictureTels and Lucent innovations thereupon, but even less success in getting people to use them, even within Lucent. Why? The video sucked because bandwidth was still too slow and even the top-of-the-line video encoders gave us too-small pictures and bad resolution (even on a point-to-point connection; even over our ATM network... depending on which system)
Now, maybe wireless videophone systems are more apt to be used than land-based ones owing simply to the personalities of the "road warrior" type and how they communicate, but this product info doesn't mention whether or not they address serious issues regarding the usability of videophones...
Without eye-tracking for frame centering and other feedback, the image feels too unnatural, and people have a difficult time communicating with it because they get none of the visual cues they'd like to have in addition to speech - so rather than enhancing the comms it becomes distracting and (in some studies) upsetting and off-putting (especially when network or codec related jitters cause desynchronization of audio and video).
Currently, wireless networks are even slower than the best land-line networks, and small handheld devices still can pack-in less DSP and CPU power than big systems (in fact, that will always be true...) Their system does not mention anything about image resolution or bandwidth (and resultant FPS using their codec - and how this effects sound quality), and the total screen size is 4" including the person you're talking to and (oddly) feedback of yourself talking (something I don't particularly want to see when I'm talking to someone else)...
So it looks "groovy," but there's little in their info to indicate whether or not it's also usable...
This seems to fall into the category of gadgets that are cool and sci-fi, but where the practicalities and human-interface issues seem to come second to "gee whiz" value...
o/~ we are pissed, we are pissed, we have to resist... o/~ - ec8or
The one reason i wouldn't use a video phone would be that when i use a phone, i'm always doing something else. this is true for most people, i would think. specially if it's a handheld. it all goes down to productivity. if i can have the phone in my left hand or shoulder, i still have my eyes, and one or two hands for doing something else like using the computer, watching tv or driving.
the only case i can think of right now where i would want to see the person on the other side would be during a meeting on a conference call, but that's usually only a small fraction of all the calls y make/receive.
There are two kinds of people in the world: Those with good memory.
I am only posting this to Michael's stories until he responds to me. If he doesn't I will take it up with Taco. Whoever is posting it anonymously is not me. I will take the karma hit, because this is hypocritical bullshit.
Oh goody. Another toy to distract the idiots in the "Honda Racing" Accords as they tailgate me down the Don Valley Parkway.
Thankfully, my truck can effortlessly demolish any Honda product ever made.
While this is great technology with many applications, I'd hope that people would have sufficient common sense not to use them in the car.
Sadly, in my drive to work every day, I see literally dozens of people reading newspapers folded up in their steering wheels, gabbing on the phone, eating breakfast (cereal - from a bowl - while driving a car that rolled back on hills (stickshift!) - the guy was *good*), doing make-up, shaving, etc.
I just worry that this innovation will only result in more traffic jams.
Fire and Meat. Yummy.
Actually, the only way I can see this technology catching on is the same way as others have - if the phone sex industry adopts it.
Of course, as seen from your comment, they'd have to set higher standards.
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Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
LMNOP is the generic meaningless acronym. You use it in a list of acronyms like that to make it sound like you're singing the Alphabet Song.
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Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Is my processor too fast? The graphics changed so fast on the linked page that I couldn't discern any details.
First post > 0 (not for long)
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E_NOSIG
Since videophones have now nearly replaced the ordinary audiophone, it's about time that they finally made a mobile phone that does video!
And this will be so much better for all those people who drive and talk on their phones, too!
In computers we are ahead. In cellphones we are at least three years behind Europe and Japan. Sucks to be us.
XeoMage
The idea has been around for way over 30 years. Some of the reasons it never caught on were
1) no industry standard
2) Price
3) My friend does not have so what is the use
4) People just want to talk not look at each other
I am not saying that the Video will not become main stream someday but I do not see it happening any time soon because of the history of concept.
No.
Now I have to look like I am in the office and clean up around me. Gone are the conference calls from the bathroom. Facial expressions will prevent you from rolling your eyes when you want to say something but can't say it. This raises the poker stakes even higher for making calls. Then again you could make really interesting gestures over the phone or do gang lang signing for others on the conference call. Let's see... you could even show your lack of ethusiasm by pointing the phone at a wall... or have little post it notes with different smiley faces tacked to a peg board that you could swivel between during conversation.
Just thinking out loud... but I don't think this is something that will be as pervasive as we think.
http://fudge.org