HP creates Halo effect for videoconferencing

NEW YORK--Hewlett-Packard has launched a new videoconferencing product, underscoring its ambition to become a leading player in the enterprise collaboration market.

Dubbed the HP Halo Collaboration Studio, the e-conferencing package encompasses digital visual products and collaboration software tools. It can create realistic collaborative interaction through a color-calibrated visual experience, a key differentiator compared with traditional products, the company said.

"It's something we believe will not only disrupt the traditional videoconferencing market but will also change the way people work in a global market," Vyomesh Joshi, executive vice president of HP's imaging and printing group, said Monday at a release event here.

Joshi noted that HP drew from its experience in developing color science, imaging and networking technology, and built the concept for Halo with the help of DreamWorks Animation, the maker of animated films such as "Shrek" and "Madagascar."

According to DreamWorks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg, the animation company first broached the idea to design a new offering because it experienced "great frustration" with existing products in the market.

"We found ourselves (after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001) in a difficult position of having to bring together the right creative designers who were located in different places," he said.

With traditional products, he said, participants in a videoconference could not smoothly hold multiple conversations or share visual images of smaller details on physical items.

Halo currently is available only in one standard configuration. Each room using the Halo system is set up for six people and consists of three plasma displays and studio-quality audio and lighting equipment. Three cameras reflect images on the middle, left and right sides of the room.

Running on a 54mbps T3 line, a typical Halo room is controlled via a centralized software interface that allows participants to switch between rooms and enables documents to be shared directly from their notebook computers.

Participants can see each other in life-size images projected on the plasma displays and use a dedicated

[Mr Twain]

Wah?

"It can create realistic collaborative interaction through a color-calibrated visual experience, a key differentiator compared with traditional products, the company said".

Those whacky PR guys... I think that mean's people can see each other on high definition plasma screens in a room, and no one else has done that yet.

[ccisat1dxj]

Awesome

Let's get the cost of this down! Corporate America can use this in many areas.

[RodrigoCastilloDiaz]

Well, this information was very interesting because we can see how much technologies have grown and increased since its beginning in aspects like this one. The videoconference helps people to talk and see throughout the world in a cheap and useful way because almost everyone can access internet and a videoconferencing system is cheap and you can instal it to any computer. In this summary we can see that videoconferenca can be used for a lot of this. Not just talking to another person. Maybe in the future we would even be able to work, and do all our daily life though a computer like the halo rooms.

[soph-olivares]

i believe this is a very useful thing, it will make many things easier, like you won`t need to travel to get to a meating but it also has its bad part, like it will make us like robots or like you won`t have to travel for a meeting, but you won`t know the culture, environment, etc of a place.

[angelfernandoinfotech51]

Well, its kind of interesting to see that new techs as this one are now being put onto service. This ¨Halo¨technology of videoconferencing seems to be useful and shows us that a new breed of business communication options are being born. Businesses neeed this kind of methods nowadays for a quicker communication for plan and business problems sharing.

Having your people or your own boss talking to you from a plasma screen with super HD characteristics sounds quite interesting, but at the same time the use of this new method of videoconferencing enhances the experience and makes it even more interactive than it normally is.

Anyway, with the useful and important advance of this tech we can now assure ourselves that sooner or later holographs will be sour new method of communication in civil and business ways. Thats it.