Just a quick post about my personal experiences with a relatively high fidelity EMS:
HP Halo Studio. Halo Studio is a dedicated meeting room where only one side of a table is reserved for co-located participants. The other side is covered by 3 large plasma displays showing remote participants. This allows a connection between 4 geographically separated Halo rooms.
Above the 3 remote participant displays, there is an additional display for sharing content. Sharing is supported from a laptop or physically through an overhead HD camera (e.g., sharing a paper document on the table).
One interesting aspect is that the system supports (to some extent) eye contact and spatial gesturing. This is achieved by a 3-axis controlled patent-pending camera system. Above all 3 remote participants displays, there is a video camera that can be rotated around 3 axis. I took a few photos from the "engine room" behind the displays:
This seems to work surprisingly well. Overlapping talk and other turn taking problems still exist, but significanly less than in typical teleconference settings.
Looks super good I am sure many companies will benefit from using this technology. In the company I am working now most of the meetings are done face-to-face which implies sometimes traveling I have never understood this... but I guess a regular webcam couldn't do the work, with something like this I am sure it will be different.
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