Polycom Fully Embraces H.26 Video Compression

Polycom is extending support for H.26 High Profile compression, which can shrink the amount of bandwidth required for high-definition video conferencing by as much as 50 percent, to most of its telepresence product lineup. Support for the H.26 High Profile standard is especially critical in Polycom’s videoconference bridging products because now customers using H.26 High Profile video compression do not have to see the quality of their video conference degraded when conferencing with systems that don’t have H.26 High Profile support, said Laura Shay, director of product marketing for Polycom.

Polycom also rolled out today a new Open Telepresence Experience 300 series that supports up to full 1080p video using half the network bandwidth of previous Polycom offerings by including support for the H.26 High Profile standard. According to Shay, the new systems also have greater video appeal in terms of a variety of ergonomic and visual upgrades.

Shay said that while Cisco deserves credit for exposing more customers to the value of telepresence, the company’s proprietary telepresence approach limits its appeal because relying on gateways to communicate with industry standard systems only serves to degrade performance.

In addition, Shay said that an emerging telepresence services market is not going to support the adoption of proprietary systems that effectively can only communicate with each other. Cisco, in the meantime, has moved to acquire Tandberg Systems, a provider of video conferencing systems that adhere to open standards. But Cisco has yet to formally clarify how it intends to position telepresence systems from both Cisco and Tandberg beyond a general roadmap the company outlined earlier this year.

In addition, Shay noted that by embracing the H.26 High Profile video compression standard, Polycom is making it feasible for more IT organizations to deploy high-definition video conferencing systems without having to upgrade their routers and switches.

The new Polycom systems, which will be shown this week at the Infocomm 2010 Conference, are scheduled to be available in the third quarter.