Road warriors and telecommuters may get excited about this announcement. Today, Tandberg is announcing that high-end video conferencing features are being built into its low-cost PC video collaboration tool, Movi.
The product is aimed at mobile workers who need to collaborate by video without too many quality compromises. The upgrade to Tandberg’s Movi tool makes it more intuitive. It allows someone to share PC content with other session participants. You could thus use it to host your own video conference with presentation materials.
It connects users via standard-based H.323 and SIP video conference systems. Norway-based Tandberg pairs its Movi software with its PrecisionHD USB camera, which can transfer video at 720p resolution and 30 frames per second. That good enough for high-definition video quality. The hope is to enable anyone in the world to work with others remotely, said Fredrik Halvorsen, Tandberg’s chief executive officer. Tandberg is in the process of being acquired by Cisco for $3 billion. Tandberg makes video conferencing systems for corporations that normally sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Movi lets users connect with multiple people at the same time on a video call. Users can record and archive calls. The University of North Carolina is using it to connect physicians and patients via video calls all over North Carolina, which has resulted in better care for cancer patients. Of course, businesses will likely still pay a lot of money for high-end video conferencing, such as the one pictured at the top. But products like this Movi upgrade from Tandberg are making video calls more practical for consumers. Tandberg of course isn’t the only player in this space. It has a lot of competition, from Hewlett-Packard to Skype.