| Video cameras on every desktop are the panacea
for face-to-face communications with anyone across the Internet.
Unfortunately, there are some issues that are hampering the "video
everywhere" concept. One is cost. Today, it just isn't cost effective
to have a camera on everyone's desktop. Second, video is a
bandwidth-intensive application. IT managers cringe at the thought of
every employee performing video conferences on their networks!
However, video conferencing and one-way video streaming are not without
some successes. Several companies make video products for the conference
room, where it makes sense to deploy an expensive video solution since all
employees can share the video hardware. Companies with multiple locations
can deploy a single video conferencing unit in each location's conference
room rather than deploying cameras at every desktop.
MAX Internet Communications sells a product called MAX i.c.Live Video
Communication Station (VCS) that enables true-motion, two-way synchronized
video and audio over the Internet or any LAN supporting IP. We should
mention that this is not your typical video conferencing product. It's not
just another USB camera, which most home users typically buy. Rather, the
MAX i.c.Live VCS doesn't use USB cameras at all, but instead supports any
analog camera with a video output. Also, the MAX i.c.Live VCS is a
business-class product that simultaneously supports high-quality, two-way
video communications and video streaming with its patented MAX i.c.Live
Internet Media Processor technology. This onboard Internet Media Processor
offloads the processing from the host processor to greatly enhance video
performance.
In addition to its excellent video capabilities, the MAX i.c.Live VCS
also offers an Internet browser. Additional features like Dolby Digital
(AC-3) audio coding and Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) output make the MAX
i.c.Live VCS an ideal, affordable solution for a range of business and
consumer applications. Since the patented media card supports video
outputs, you can actually watch DVD movies or even surf the Web on your TV
using the accompanying wireless keyboard for control -- all from the
comfort of your living room couch!
INSTALLATION
The VCS comes with the hardware and software already installed. The only
installation required is configuring the various settings. After booting
up the system we were presented with a very user-friendly screen with five
button choices: Video Phone, Video Mail, Video Cast, Video Surf, and Video
DVD (See Figure 6). We clicked on the clock to get to the Configuration
Settings menu, chose Network Settings, then entered the default password
to change the network settings. After establishing the various network
settings (such as IP address, DNS server, default gateway, etc.) we
proceeded to establish the e-mail settings from another password-protected
screen. Overall, the installation and configuration process was pretty
effortless.
DOCUMENTATION
The documentation guided us step-by-step in setting up the system. It
included plenty of diagrams and screenshots. The most difficult part of
setting up the system was remembering all the passwords. Each of the
different setup screens requires a different password. While these
passwords are listed in the documentation, often we didn't remember them
and when we tried to flip through the documentation to find a particular
password, we couldn't easily find it. The appendix would be a good
location for a listing of all the passwords for quick reference. Also,
there was no index in the back of the manual. Other than these minor
complaints, we were quite pleased with the documentation.
FEATURES
This product features an optional built-in DVD player, hardware MPEG1
encoder/decoder, conventional and Dolby AC3 Digital Surround Sound, MP3
Music and Audio CD, Internet surfing, send and receive video-e-mail, and
more. You can operate completely by remote or use the optional wireless
keyboard. The VCS includes support for full motion/low data rates, as well
as H.323 and H.320.
Other features include:
- Microsoft NetShow -- MPEG4.
- Camera and microphone included.
- Support for NetMeeting.
- S-video output.
OPERATIONAL TESTING
The heart of the VCS is the hardware card inside the unit, which MAX IC
designed itself. It features a 300 MHz clock, over 3.6 billion operations
per second (BOPS), and 23.6 BOPS when utilizing motion estimation. When we
previewed the local video, we were very impressed with the video quality
and the frame rate. The video was real-time, full motion, with only a
slight delay between our motions and the time displayed on the screen.
The VCS features a built-in video phone application that displays the
local and the remote video. You can initiate a call simply by entering an
IP address you can initiate a call. Since IP addresses are often difficult
to remember, or change constantly, the VCS supports logging onto an ILS
(Internet Locator Server), so you can initiate calls to other users logged
onto the ILS server simply by double-clicking on their name. We also
tested making a NetMeeting call from the VCS to another machine. The test
performed flawlessly. On the remote side, we were very impressed with the
video quality we were receiving from the VCS unit.
Next, we tested the video mail feature, which allows you to record a
video file and send it via the e-mail client that is build into VCS. It
grants you the option to record at 100 Kbps or high-quality 200 Kbps. We
made a video recording and sent it to one of our internal e-mail accounts.
When we retrieved the e-mail, we determined the VCS is using a standard
AVI file format utilizing MPEG compression codecs to compress the audio
and video.
One of VCS's coolest features is its built-in broadcast functionality.
Simply by choosing the Video Cast option from the main menu, we could then
choose a video quality (64 Kbps, 100 Kbps, or 200 Kbps depending on
bandwidth available) and broadcast the video and audio to the Internet.
The broadcast feature is great for distance learning and training. For VCS
home users, this can also be used as a turnkey Web cam system that is so
popular these days. In addition, CEOs and presidents will love the fact
their employees throughout the country or even around the world can simply
go to an IP address from their Microsoft Media Player and listen to a live
message about corporate earnings, corporate direction, etc.
For our tests, one of the TMC Labs engineers set the quality to 200
Kbps and then was able to view a high-quality video transmission of TMC
Labs from his home cable broadband connection. Not only was he able
"spy" into TMC Labs, but with the microphone connected to the
VCS he could also hear what was going on in the lab.
The final major feature we examined was Video Surf, which essentially
uses an embedded Internet Explorer with a MAX Internet Communications
graphical front end. It was quite user-friendly, although in some ways we
would have preferred a "native" Internet Explorer. MAX changed
some things, such as the Favorites (bookmarks) feature. VCS doesn't
utilize the built-in IE Favorites, but rather its own Favorites window. In
our opinion, it isn't as good. For one, it doesn't allow for nested
subfolders to organize your favorites.
Another drawback: if you have other PCs on your LAN, you can't simply
copy your favorites from the C:\Windows\Favorites subfolder to the VCS
system. Nonetheless, we think MAX did a good job hiding superfluous
Internet Explorer buttons and preventing users from tinkering with the
browser too much, which may mess things up. Since we believe the VCS is a
great product meant to be shared by employees within a conference room,
it's probably a good thing that users can't mess with the browser too
much.
We called MAX IC to ask them how we could get around the
"wrapper" to get to the Windows operating system. They told us
to use an undocumented trick -- holding down a series of keys and then a
password to get to the operating system. This gave us the ability to
install additional software onto the unit or make modifications to various
options.
ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
Unfortunately, you cannot type the IP address into your Web browser to
view a broadcast. You have to open Microsoft Media Player and then type in
the IP address. We'd like to see Microsoft's Personal Web Server running
on the VCS, which could display a simple HTML page and then automatically
spawn the Media Player.
Although VCS wants you to use the Video Phone menu option (which uses
an embedded NetMeeting client) to make video calls, we would like to be
able to use NetMeeting directly, since that would enable whiteboarding,
text chat, and application sharing. Unfortunately, there was no option on
the main menu to launch NetMeeting to initiate a video/collaboration
session using the NetMeeting client. We knew it supported NetMeeting, but
it certainly was not immediately apparent how to get to it. By scanning
the manual we discovered the answer. First we had to click on the clock to
get to the configuration screen. Next, we had to enable the
"Advanced" options by entering the advanced options password.
Once enabled, we could click on Configure NetMeeting, which would then
launch NetMeeting. This was a bit tedious and not intuitive.
We wanted to change the screen resolution from the Control Panel. We
determined that the hardware does support higher resolutions. In fact we
were able to go as high as 1, 600 x 1,200 resolution. However, when we
switched back to the software, we noticed that it didn't support any
resolution higher than 640 x 480. Obviously, TV screens cannot handle
resolutions higher than that, but using a standard PC monitor, we should
be able to adjust to a higher resolution. This makes it easier to surf Web
pages with a wide layout. One final suggestion would be the ability to
record a broadcast from the server so that it could be e-mailed later on
for those that missed it, or for training purposes.
CONCLUSION
Overall, TMC Labs was very impressed with the MAX VCS product,
particularly its user-friendliness and excellent video quality. In the
realms of corporate video conferencing, distance learning, education, and
training, medical visualization, and collaboration, the product's price
tag is very competitive. Also, for the techno-savvy home user looking to
add Web-browsing functionality to their home theater setup, along with a
nifty wireless keyboard, Web-cam functionality, and a DVD player to boot,
will find this product an attractive solution.
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