‘Videophone’ product system on U.S. market

Press, 19 December 1986, Page 31

‘Videophone’ product system on U.S. market

By

DEAN LOKKEN of

Reuters (through NZPA) San Francisco In the not-too-distant future, you may one day be punching away at the keyboard of your personal computer when the boss’s scowling face pops up on the screen. He asks for last month’s sales figures. Or tells you to get your feet off the desk, trim your hair and straighten your tie. The equipment for such face-to-face conversations via personal computers is now on the market, although industry analysts say it still appears to be too expensive for immediate widespread use. Compression Labs, Inc, a leader in teleconferencing technology, recently introduced a desktop video system that can take advantage of ordinary telephone lines to send moving images across the country from one personal computer to another.

When attached to an IBM-compatible personal computer, the equipment makes possible visual and audio communications between workers at a common site, or from an executive’s desk to remote offices.

C.L.I. President, John Tyson, thinks his company’s “Rembrandt” desktop video system will save businessmen considerable time and money that otherwise would have been spent on travel. The C.L.I. system costs about $U5135,000 for a

configuration of five video stations and it can accommodate up to 85 stations. Whenever an employee is ready for a personal computer videoconference he simply presses a button, then dials a telephone number. The person on the receiving end activates images on both screens. For privacy, the video or audio can be switched off at any time during the conversation. Compression Labs, a California-based company, is a pioneer in techniques that compress visual data in such a way that they can then be transmitted over common digital telephone lines. In developing the personal computer system, C.L.I. relied on many of the same techniques it already was using in larger screen teleconference hook-ups. C.L.l.’s big screen equipment is used by numerous corporate giants and Government agencies in the United States, such as Boeing, Citicorp, AT&T Communications, R.C.A., Xerox, Sears, N.A.S.A. and the three branches of the military. The industry has come a long way since 1964 when American Telephone & Telegraph introduced its Picturephone at the 1964 World’s Fair in New York. The Picturephone did not sell, but the market for videconferencing was born and is thriving today. Lome Parker, director

of the Centre for Interactive Programmes at the University of Wisconsin, estimates that videoconferencing will be a $2 billion industry by 1990. According to “Business Marketing” magazine, videoconferencing sales grew about 20 per cent a year between 1978 and 1985. Industry analysts think there is room for even greater growth if the costs can be cut sharply. Mr Elliot Gold, publisher of the TeleSpan newsletter in Altadena, California, said he doubted that Compression Labs has lowered the cost of videoconferencing enough to create a market for its system. “What they’ve done is an interesting idea, but they have not yet clearly demonstrated whether there is a market for it,” he told Reuters. “It’s too expensive for desktop use except in a narrow market.” However, he said it should compete well against a system offered by Datapoint, a Texas firm that is marketing what it calls Minx, for “Multimedia Integrated Network Exchange,” but at a greater cost. Mr Michael Kennedy, an analyst with the Gartner Group in Stamford, Connecticut, agreed with Mr Gold. “I believe that videoconferencing is inevitable but the timing is still out in the future,” he said. “I think the price is still too high to attract a lot of interest.”