Telepresence

Today’s Telepresence strategy incorporates high-quality (spatial) audio and life-like video at low latency in a specially tuned environment. When it comes to telepresence, the most common question asked is “What is the difference between telepresence and videoconferencing?” The answer? Telepresence solutions use video and audio conferencing components as well as other “arts and sciences” to create a two-way immersive communications experience that simulates an in-person, interactive encounter. In other words, there are four major areas where telepresence excels and videoconferencing falls short:

• High-quality audio and video: If the experience is to emulate a meeting with participants directly in the room, then the audio must be clear, without noise, intelligible, echo-free, and of sufficient volume. Multi-channel audio (sometimes known as “spatial audio”) can also provide directional cues as to who is speaking if multiple people are in the room, much as sounds from people sitting around a table come from different directions. Likewise, video images should be clear, life size, and noise-free, while providing sufficient resolution and detail. These constraints on the video require careful control of the screen size as well as the distances between screens, cameras, and chairs. The audio and video signals must also be synchronized and suffer from no noticeable delay, delay being one of the most visible deterrents to having a natural-feeling meeting
• Simplicity: One of the two major complaints with traditional videoconferencing is that video calls are too complex to set up and operate. Cisco, for example, has addressed this issue by making connections as simple as pressing a single button. Others require pressing no buttons at all (a managed services support person or scheduling system places the call on your behalf). In addition, telepresence solutions typically include no user-configurable settings (call speed, camera pan-tilt-zoom) or intimidating hand-held remotes to confuse customers. 
• High reliability: A second major complaint with traditional videoconferencing is that connections are unreliable. Either the calls do not go through or the connections provide poor quality audio or video, despite the fact that the same connection made 24 hours (or even 5 minutes) earlier was perfectly fine. Telepresence suppliers have taken many steps to ensure that their systems deliver a consistent experience time after time. These include network assessments to ensure the network traffic is properly engineered to avoid congestion issues, extensive system monitoring and management services, high performance managed network services, and call launching / meeting management services. 
• Environmental excellence: A successful telepresence experience requires more than just a successful video connection. The environment must create a reasonable illusion that the remote participants are in the same room. Hence, the telepresence deployment must control the furniture (particularly the conference room table), lighting, fixtures, and even the wall paint colors and material to make all sites involved in the call identical (or symmetrical). Some systems employ a table that is designed to “merge” into the display, giving the distinct impression that the remote table is actually connected to the local table, i.e…. the impression that the two tables are really one. Many telepresence systems strive to make the technology invisible to the user: microphones, speakers, cameras, etc. are hidden to the extent possible following the belief that these items are not present in an in-person meeting and should therefore not be present in a telepresence meeting. Of course, an important part of the meeting environment is created by careful attention to room lighting and acoustics. For example, reverberation caused by the room echo that occurs between the talker and the microphone can be minimized by room geometry, microphone placement, and wall coverings, etc.

If your company is looking to implement a telepresence solution CBE Technologies works with best-in-class telepresence providers such as Cisco and Tandberg to provide a system that will immerse you in the communication experience. For more information or to discuss implementing a telepresence solution give us a call at 1-800-YES-TECH or send us an email at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it