Vidyo Ups the Performance, Reduces Cost of Video Conferencing

Vidyo officials want to make it easier and cheaper for businesses to run multipoint video conferencing sessions. To that end, the company is offering free multipoint conferencing for room systems to VidyoConferencing customers, saving businesses the cost of having to invest in new video conferencing architecture when they want to expand the capability to other rooms or to upgrade from low-resolution to HD video.

Vidyo also is announcing that it has created the first video conferencing system to reach 1440p video quality in an HD multiparty session over a standard IP network. That capability will be demonstrated during the InfoComm 2010 conference in Las Vegas June 9-11.

With the free multipoint conferencing capability, Vidyo is looking to bring on-demand pricing to the video conferencing space, according to Ofer Shapiro, Vidyo’s co-founder and CEO.

Video conferencing offerings from competitors usually require an MCU (multipoint control unit) port for every room system that connects, calls and transcodes video. Each MCU-based port costs about $6,000. Vidyo is offering the ports for free for any room system, whether connecting a VidyoRoom HD system or a room system from other vendors, such as Cisco, Polycom or LifeSize Communications.

The company’s VidyoGateway enables interoperability between the various room systems, but doesn’t require a port, which helps drive down the cost to run a video conference.

“This new price model enables organizations to provide VidyoConferencing capability to everyone, yet only asks customers to pay for the connections they need,” Shapiro said in a statement. “With software licensing, they can purchase more VidyoLines -on-demand’ as their usage grows. And improvements are merely software updates rather than fork-lift upgrades of MCU hardware. This is a dramatically lower cost model.”

The pricing is based on a connection rather than a port, he said. A company may have many VidyoDesktop applications installed on PCs, but a connection isn’t made until one of the VidyoDesktop clients is connected to a Vidyo conference or to another user. The connections-which the company calls VidyoLines-are licensed for $950 for point-to-point and multipoint for each 1080p-capable VidyoLine.

Vidyo also is introducing VidyoOne-R, a $3,000 VidyoConferencing system that allows up to 20 concurrent room systems to meet in multipoint or point-to-point conferences. The new system is a less-expensive version of the VidyoOne-10, which lists for $9,500.

At the InfoComm show, Vidyo officials will demonstrate a VidyoConferencing session delivering 2560 by 1440p resolution, which they said is 77 percent more pixels than 1080p.

The company is able to do this via its VidyoRouter technology that takes advantage of Intel’s fastest multicore processors. The demonstration will run on a desktop PC powered by an Intel Core i7 chip.

VidyoConferencing supporting 1440p needs at least 4M bps. It will be available in July, according to the company.