Slideshow: Cisco Umi Takes Telepresence To The Home

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Vidyo has announced plug-in for Lotus SameTime that it claims offers videoconferencing capabilities comparable to Cisco Telepresence. Vidyo calls it "personal telepresence," and it may soon be available on your desktop, if you're a user of IBM's Lotus SameTime.

"Just as SameTime users can go into a voice communication from an IM chat session they'll be able to do HD-quality multi-point videoconferencing," said Vidyo director of product marketing Mark Noble.

The difference between average videoconferencing and what Cisco Telepresence offers is latency, Noble, explained. Cisco solved the latency problem with expensive switches. "With our video router architecture we've eliminated transcoding from our network, too. We then leverage the general Intel architecture and can deliver a lower-cost version of low latency.

"On an i7 laptop, I can decode 1080P resolution at 30 frames a second, and with an Intel dual core processor I can encode 720P at 30 frames per second," he explained. "These end points can be connected with high-end room systems," like those offered by Cisco, "down to mobile devices, on the same call, with everyone getting everything they need. Because the system is monitoring all the end points, scaling the video streams to the end points, not everyone throttles down to the lowest common denominator, and we're not wasting bandwidth."