Joe, It is hard to say from the press release..by design.....
I am sure.
First I use Intel't Iphone, M$ NetMeeting and Vocaltec's Iphone for video. With Vocaltec's Iphone and using the Silicon Vision Digital Cam and dedicated Zoran capture card on my pentium 200 MMX machine, connected at 28.8 I see frame rates of 15 frames per second... sometimes. This can only happen when I am listening, not moving much...AND with an excellent route on the internet. Transmitting audio takes up bandwidth an reduces the frame rate. Depending upon the audio codec being used, and the resultant required bitrate, video frame rates will generally decrease to 4 to 8 frames per second when I am talking. Movement will further reduce the frame rate because more data has to be transmitted.
No one that I talk to is limited to 2-3 frames when they are not sending audio, including those using 486 class machines and parallel port cameras. But even those with dedicated capture cards, 266 MHz Pentium 2 machines and solid 33.6 connections cannot maintain 15 FPS even when using the lowest bitrate, H323 5.3 KBs audio codec. It simply is not a hardware issue (as Camelot would have you believe) but one of bandwith. For instance, two people with 128 Kbs ISDN and a decent net connection, can do 15 FPS while sending audio.
I am not saying that 15 FPS and audio over a 28.8 connection is impossible, but it is with any combination of the H323 protocols. Ther just is not a big enough pipe at 28.8, Further it is impossible using any currently available audio/video codecs that maintain reasonable fidelity. Using something like the Televox low bitrate (2.4 KBs) audio while sending black and white "frame change only" video, it can be done, but results would not be considered "state of the art". In fact the results would be quite unacceptable.
The reason I mention the $2,500 to $3,500 products is that they pretty much push the state of the art today, and they won't do what DW claims for VideoTalk.
Obviously no one knows how DW arrives at his numbers.The market target or true operational requirements are not mentioned. In fact, the hype release purposefully avoids giving any information that could be used to investigate the validity of any of the outrageous claims. This press release is really more "snake oil salesmanship" than any accounting of factual data. |
