Polycom intros 1080p Immersive Telepresence solns

BANGALORE, INDIA: Polycom, Inc., the global leader in telepresence, video and voice communication solutions, has expanded the industry's broadest telepresence portfolio and most comprehensive visual communication solution to meet a wider range of customer application and network requirements.

Demonstrating Polycom's commitment to enabling customers to future-proof their investments, Polycom is enhancing its RealPresence Experience (RPX) and Polycom Telepresence Experience (TPX) immersive telepresence solutions with support for 1080p and broadcast-quality 720p (60 frames per second) high definition (HD) video quality.

Enabling people to meet face-to-face over distance with exceptional clarity, the enhancements to the RPX and TPX immersive telepresence video solutions will support new business and vertical applications, and help promote greater collaboration amongst virtual teams – further limiting the need for travel, thereby helping customers to achieve increased cost savings and improved productivity through reduced executive down-time.

"Polycom knows visual communication better than anyone, and our global network of channel and service partners represent the leading experts in optimising networks for real-time visual communication," said Joe Sigrist, senior vice president and general manager of video solutions at Polycom. "Polycom's motives for visual communication are clear. We provide customers with an outstanding collaboration experience, the best value, and the greatest flexibility through standards-based solutions so they can get the greatest return on their investments."

Sigrist added: "Visual communication is not one-size-fits-all, and Polycom offers customers the broadest range of fully integrated solutions for video-enabling their organisations and tailoring the technology to meet specific application needs and network requirements."

Through its VC2 vision, Polycom is transforming yesterday's video conferencing to more integrated visual communication solutions that are simple to use, provide an experience that exceeds user expectations, and that can be delivered reliably, securely and with scale. Supporting this vision, Polycom's solution includes the following key elements:

Video-powered unified communications – Polycom's standards-based visual communication solutions can be deployed alongside any telephony or unified communication environment. Polycom also offers integration for several leading unified communication environments, including Microsoft OCS 2007 and IBM Sametime, as well as IP telephony platforms from Avaya and Nortel. This integration makes Polycom's industry-leading telepresence and visual communication solutions just one-click-away within the familiar productivity tools that millions of people use every day. In addition, Polycom offers solutions specifically designed for Microsoft OCS 2007 environments, including a range of IP phones and a video system that integrates seamlessly with Microsoft LiveMeeting.

Broadest range of solutions for video-enabling organisations – Polycom offers the broadest range of visual communication solutions that work together seamlessly for extending video throughout organisations; for use with customers, partners and vendors; and for adapting to unique application requirements. Polycom offers solutions for virtually any application or business environment from fully immersive telepresence suites, to flexible room telepresence systems starting at just $8,000, entry-level DVD-quality video conferencing systems starting at $3,000, and full-featured desktop video solutions as low as $50 per seat.

With Polycom, customers can deploy desktop video applications, traditional video conferencing systems, and personal, room and immersive telepresence systems within the same network and provision devices and users for network requirements. This also allows customers to cost-effectively extend visual communication and gives IT managers complete control over the video traffic on their network.

End-to-end 1080p and broadcast-quality 720p - Polycom telepresence solutions enable people to work more effectively and efficiently across distances through incredibly life-like, face-to-face interaction and the ability to seamlessly share any type of content. With the addition of 1080p and broadcast-quality 720p on the Polycom RPX and TPX solutions, Polycom now supports the most comprehensive range of HD capabilities, allowing customers to adapt the immersive telepresence solutions for their unique application and network requirements. Polycom delivers these capabilities end-to-end with existing support on its RMX 2000 telepresence infrastructure and on its HDX 8000 series of room telepresence solutions, which start at just $17,500 for 1080p.

Support for 1080p resolution enhances the telepresence experience with added realism and suits applications that require the absolute highest clarity of video and content such as telemedicine. Support for broadcast-quality 720p 60fps provides the most natural interaction available with exceptional motion handling ideal for dynamic environments like classrooms and training centers. Support for 720p at 30fps provides HD quality well suited for most standard meetings. Support for standard definition resolution (480p or DVD quality) starts at just 256 kbps of bandwidth, providing high-quality for calls with desktop video clients and standard-definition video conferencing systems.

In addition to HD video quality, all Polycom telepresence solutions provide an UltimateHD experience by delivering HD video, HD StereoSurround voice, and HD content collaboration capabilities for the most effective meeting experience available.

Powerful, flexible infrastructure for migrating to telepresence - Polycom infrastructure allows IT managers to centrally provision and manage distributed video networks and deliver enterprise-wide video services reliably, securely and with scale. Polycom provides the only infrastructure with the power to support the highest levels of telepresence and HD performance, as well as the flexibility to support the mixed-resolution environments of most customers today. This helps customers get maximum return on existing video conferencing investments as they migrate to HD and telepresence applications.

Any-to-any communication for real-world customer environments and networks - Polycom visual communication solutions are based on established, open standards and its telepresence and video systems interoperate with the ecosystem of more than 1.5 million standards-based systems in use today, expanding the opportunities for collaboration. Polycom's infrastructure allows people on different networks, using systems with different capabilities to join the same meeting and receive an optimised experience. In fact, Polycom's infrastructure can actually improve the quality of older systems through a feature called Video Clarity, which enhances and upscales image quality for a dramatically improved experience. Polycom solutions also feature the breakthrough Lost Packet Recovery (LPR) technology that negates the impact of packet loss and network congestion to ensure consistent, high-quality within real-world customer network environments.

Real-time visual communication, streaming video and on-demand video content – In addition to real-time video communication and collaboration, Polycom customers can use their telepresence solutions for live streaming and on-demand video applications. Through a combined, recording, streaming and video content management solution, everyday users can easily record telepresence and video conferencing, including HD resolution, and stream conferences to tens of thousands of viewers. It can also be used to create dynamic video content. Using their telepresence systems, users can record content and then enhance, publish, store and make the content available for secure, on-demand playback.

The expansion of Polycom's immersive telepresence portfolio to support 1080p and broadcast-quality 720p furthers the Polycom VC2 vision of video as a pervasive component of unified communication in the enterprise – enabling people to leverage video anytime, anywhere. Solutions under the Polycom VC2 vision provide the foundation for enhanced integration with Polycom's strategic unified communications partners.

Availability

Polycom RPX and TPX immersive telepresence solutions supporting 1080p and broadcast-quality 720p are now available worldwide through certified Polycom channel partners. Upgrade programs for existing customers are also available.