Cheap Video Conferencing for Small-to-Medium Sized Corps?

Jason W. asks: "I work for a medium sized company of about 75 employees. A while back I was asked by our CEO to look into a video conferencing solution. I didn't find much information about setting up a system in house except from Real Networks. The problem was, they wanted $10,000 just to start. We even had a sales visit from a consultant who laughed at us when we didn't want to spend $8-10,000. Like I said, we are a medium sized company, but did I mention we are privately owned? $10,000 is WAY to much for us to spend on what would be, new technology for us. I wanted to poll Slashdot readers, and see if they have any experience in this area. As for our needs, I know we would need to talk from Texas to Washington D.C, and to Virginia. Can we do it from our website? Do we have to have hardware 'stations' on each end? What are your thoughts?"

Comments

Icky but cheap...

[nekoniku]

if you're wintel-based, you could set up webcams and MS NetMeeting to accomplish some of this.

Re:Icky but cheap...

[NanoGator]

"if you're wintel-based, you could set up webcams and MS NetMeeting to accomplish some of this."

Play your cards right, and you can get a faster internet connection out of it too.

"Well, we have the cameras, but now we need many many megabits of bandwidth. The good news, though, is that we can still do it for half the price!"

Polycom

[altp]

We use polycom camera's here. They are a bit pricey, but do the job. The one advantage they have over the solutions we've tried is that they are self contained. No computer required.

The imaging quality on some of their lower end webcams are questionable though.

Re:Polycom

[Mr.Phil]

We use the Polycom products for providing Interactive TV (ITV) courses to the local school district. The schools use this to allow a class to be offered in another district if needed. We were using a Via (not VIA) product that Lucent discontinued after they bought Via. The Polycom products are very nice in that you can do IP or use leased line to make the calls and vary the channel bandwidth.

Lots of information on video teleconfrence can be found out by searching for ITV.

Re:Polycom

[FattMattP]

We use a lot of Polycom equipment where I work. Although the standalone units are expensive, there are smaller units that hookup to your computer called ViaVideo. They work pretty well and just plug into a USB port. The software will let you do most of what a larger Polycom unit will do with regards to connecting to other Polycom stations and showing all the other people's cameras that you are connected to. I think it's about $500 or $600 per unit. The only negative is that it only supports IP whereas the dedicated Polycom units will handle IP or ISDN connections. I don't use one of these myself but a coworker down the hall does and he loves it.

Also, there's always MS Netmeeting and a cheap camera.

Dlink

[austad]

D-link makes a video conferencing device. No link now, but they reviewed it on Ars Technica awhile back. Go look, it's neat, and only $300 or so.

Polycom units work great, but they are expensive. Make sure you use QoS in your routers or you're going to have problems.

Check out the Access Grid

[Shewmaker]

You should check out the Access Grid. It is flexible, powerful, and based on open standards and software. A full installation would be too pricey for you, but I know people run PIGs (Personal Interface to the Grid) on laptops with $30 USB webcams and $30 headsets. So you can start with simple netmeeting-style video conferencing, and if you feel the need you can then move on to a full AG node with dedicated audio and video machines and multiple projectors.

Note that the AG uses multicast, which your router or ISP may not support well. Also, there is a bit of a learning curve to put everything together. There are AG vendors if you want to buy a fully supported solution.

-Andrew

Calling All Starving Artists

[Strange Ranger]

If you can draw really really fast while on the phone please contact Jason W. above.

Same Situation

[dman123]

Ok, I've been in the same situation. Here's the most important question...

What level of video/audio quality do you need?

If you need something that can pass for a standard TV broadcast instead of M-M-Max Head-Head--------room, you've got to go higher end with $$$ hardware on each end. It's more like a minimum of $10,000 for each end. If you can get away with NetMeeting, then go for it.

Other questions to consider...

Q: Do you need to have a lot of people in on a conversation at one end?
A: $$

Q: Do you need to talk to customers?
A: One sale might make up for the $$$ you spend for a high end solution.

Q: Can you get away with just using the speakerphone?
A: Major savings if you can. Just send your PowerPoints or whatever beforehand and then discuss a few hours later after a quick review.

Q: Will you save $$$ on not having to fly around the country and meet face to face?
A: ?

You need to further define your needs. I am guessing that you told the consultant. If so, the laughing may have been justified.

Open H323 Solution

[gadwale]

All these comments and not one FOSS reference?

Here is a duct tape and scripting solution:

Get the software at Open H323.

Setup a dedicated MCU server using the OpenMCU conference server (also on above site). Without an MCU server, you can only have one-on-one video conferences. The MCU server will handle multiple participant video conferences as well as multiple rooms for simultaneous but separate conferences.

Use OpenPhone (also at above site) as the conferencing software. Since this is all standards based, the OpenMCU server should also support Netmeeting, Gnomemeeting etc.

This is Slashdot.. so all the advice is gratis but unreliable! Let us know how it works out!

Adi Gadwale.

PS. I have not been able to get this to work for even a 2 person call - Only one of the parties can hear the audio stream.

ICU

[zogger]

I used to video conference all the time with my brother, and this was years ago. On his end he had a pc with a video tv capture card and a cable connection and his regular plain vanilla video camera, on my end I had a cheap serial port web cam and a normal mac tower on dialup. Hmm, I think at the time his box was a 266 with 128 megs ram, I had a 180 with 64 megs. It worked great, he said on his side it was perfectly clear, on my side the frame rate was never high enough for full motion video but fun enough to use, like a series of fast stills. The audio was fine most of the time, and it had a text/chat you could use when it wasn't fine. My cam fried so I don't use it any more. My connection via modem then was dismal, I really think that was the bottleneck of most importance.

I imagine that tech has gotten a lot cheaper and better by now,computers are sure faster so that will help, and there are open source equivalents listed I see. Biggest deal is just the bandwith it seems, the camera/audio/video part is "just there",plug it in and stuff, any computer store has that jazz on the shelf now. I bet you could pull off a basic rig for 200 clams a station. Maybe, just guessing, but 5 years ago my cam was almost 300$, it has GOT to be cheaper and better by now.

Unless you want 50 inch hdtv in sensurround and smell-0-vision, no idea what that costs, but stare at a face on the screen in a window and talk, it's just there.