Voip Blog
It's Not Just Voice
Saturday, April 12, 2008
VoIP originally started as being Voice over IP. Predominately, it still is. However, the V in VoIP also stands--increasingly--for video. The technology to transmit video in realtime at any acceptable framerate has been around, but it has been proprietary, expensive, and not widely deployed.
For some reason, we've had this love affair with doing two-way video. Or at least someone has. AT&T was promising video calling was just around the corner since the mid 1960s. They promised it again in 1993 in one of their "You Will" ads:
In this decade, we're starting to see a couple of important trends, which makes video over IP reasonable:
- A wide deployment of cameras. People aren't necessarily buying webcams in large numbers, but we're starting to see cameras embedded into laptops and monitors. The simple fact it's there makes video calling possible.
- The bandwidth is starting to be there to do video adequately.
- There are a number of high-quality solutions out there. SightSpeed makes a great video tool. Skype also has a high-quality video option that--on the right equipment and bandwidth--looks absolutely fantastic.
Going away from one-on-one communication to media generation and consumption, there are now plenty of ways to both consume and generate video content over an IP network. Sites like Hulu, the U.S. television network sites, and even content creators themselves are distributing video over the Internet.
In terms of generating content, the king of user-generated content, YouTube lets you record your videos directly into their site straight off your webcam. You also have sites like Seesmic that are nothing but threaded video conversations. If you're on the go, you can record videos with Qik or Flixwagon and stream them live to the Internet complete with text chat messages straight to your phone while you're taking video.
While video may not be anywhere near the majority when it comes to one-on-one calling, it's there. I heard Jonathan Christensen from Skype say at a panel at the Spring 2008 VON.x Conference that there was a video component in 30% of their calls. 30%? That's nothing to sneeze at.
I think it will be a while before video over IP hits the mainstream. My barometer for that is: is my wife using it without my help. Currently, she's not, so we've got some time yet.
