Future of Video Conference

The ideal situation or future of video conference will be the day when users within an office can pop on the corporate LAN, video conference with the department upstairs, and then if necessary reach out to the WAN and bring the European office into the conversation. But again, any video conference, LAN or WAN based, depends on available bandwidth.

Additionally, with existing technology, when a video conference needs to span both ISDN and IP systems, a gateway is required. Technologies improve daily, however. For instance, IP multicasting can now take the place of multipoint control units (MCU) in some multipoint video conferencing scenarios. The ability to broadcast streaming media over the Internet is also effecting how video conferences are conceived and delivered.

With any emerging technology, it’s difficult to be patient when the potential is so clear but the hardware is still catching up. Without question, however, videoconferencing is here to stay and is evolving rapidly as a standard distance communication venue not just for business but for personal communication as well.

Will it be Possible to Manipulate Video Images?

Given the fact that remote webcams now broadcast online that can be controlled by the viewer to pan an area, to zoom in and out, and even to take still photographs, there is a sense that the sky is the limit in what will one day be possible with video images broadcast in a video conference.

It is entirely possible that the day will come when you will be able to video conference from your backyard pool but superimpose your image over that of a proper “office” background. This kind of “blue screen” superimposition occurs in the motion picture industry regularly and with such skill that Academy Awards are given to the special effects creators.

Not only is the technology of the video conferencing future evolving, so is the philosophy of this new communication methodology. Often times the fact that you can do a thing is not a sufficient reason to do it. As more and more video conferences occur and the methodology becomes common place, future trends in videoconferencing will stabilize toward the most solid and useful implementations of the technology.