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Affordable and Usable Video Conferencing?
Sabalon writes "I work at a state university with remote sites, minimal space, and all the other usual bits. We used to have some dedicated-circuit video conferencing tools but those have fallen into disuse. The administration is now interested in being able to stream a class from site to site, or at least have a student at one site have visual interaction with a person at another site. My thought is that if Skype, uStream and others can do live video, there has to be some things out there that don't cost a fortune but work effectively. Key things would be the ability to use commodity web cams as a source, viewable on a PC (preferably all the main OSes) and the ability to add in other devices (say H.323 encoders) or desktop/application sharing. Are there decent products and solutions out there for us mere mortals?"
Wait... You mean Cisco Telepresence doesn't fall in the category of "affordable and usable"?
Damn. All those certifications (read: hours of watching "24") have gone to waste...
I work at a state university with remote sites, minimal space, and all the other usual bits.
You already have everything you need. Use the bits to drill a hole into the ground,
then drill horizontally from there to the other locations and use a set of simple
lenses and periscope-style mirrors for video conferencing.
This works very well for us, we even implemented a network stack on top of
the video conferencing system. As a matter of fact, I posted this by dictating it
to my TOOL (Transport Overlaying Operational Linker) while watching him type it.
Ok, Jeff, just hit submit now and go take a dump, I won't be needing you to post
anything for the next 20 minutes.