At this point, the team was comfortable with the functionality of the RMX, TPX, and Room 100. Adding another infrastructure component – the Tandberg Telepresence Server – to the test bed increased complexity but that was a risk we had to take in order to evaluate T3’ capabilities. It was also my first opportunity to see TTPS in action, and I was curious to find out what it could do. I knew that TTPS was a 16-port MCU, and that it has some additional capabilities to support multi-screen telepresence systems. But I still did not understand what functionality differentiated it from a standard MCU.
The team’s first experiences were not great. The Tandberg Telepresence Server crashed during the first test in which it participated. It also had problems in what is called 'Room Switched Continuous Telepresence' mode: when a T3 site was on TPX full screen and someone in the LifeSize Room 100 started talking, LifeSize was not shown on full screen on TPX but remained in a small preview window on the bottom of the screen and the border around it was flashing in red. We saw this behavior again during the interoperability demos on October 6 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCwUWfgw9ig.
However as we worked with it we found that by cascading to TTPS from an RMX 2000 worked quite well. Gabe or Robbie configured TTPS as three-screen telepresence system on RMX, while Bill configured RMX as three-screen telepresence system on TTPS. And with every test, interoperability got better…
Stay tuned for Part 6 about the logistics around bringing a telepresence system to an industry event … http://videonetworker.blogspot.com/2009/10/part-6-telepresence-interoperability.html
Showing posts with label Tandberg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tandberg. Show all posts
Thursday, October 22, 2009
PART 4: TELEPRESENCE INTEROPERABILITY TESTS
Then things started happening very fast. Tests were scheduled in every week, sometimes two times a week, throughout September. Gabe and Robbie learned how to use the Multipoint Layout Application (MLA) that controls telepresence layouts on RMX 2000 and found out that if you name the codecs sequentially, e.g. Room451, Room452, Room453, RMX/MLA automatically recognize that these codecs belong to the same multi-codec telepresence system.
The only setback was that we could not find a way around the ‘filmstrip’ generated by Tandberg T3. It did not matter if you connect Rui’s T3 directly to TPX or to Room 100 (point-to-point calls) or if you connect T3 to RMX 2000, T3 always sent a ‘filmstrip’ to third-party systems (http://www.flickr.com/photos/20518315@N00/4015164378/). The only advice we got is that we need a Tandberg Telepresence Server (TTPS) to reconstruct the original three images. Leveraging endpoints to sell infrastructure is not a new idea, but with all due respect to Tandberg, forcing customers to buy Tandberg Telepresence Server just to be able to get the original images generated by each of the three codecs in T3 is borderline proprietary, no matter if they use H.323 signaling or not.
In my blog post http://videonetworker.blogspot.com/2009/08/curious-story-of-resource-management-in.html I have already argued that a standard conference server (MCU) can handle telepresence calls and there is no need for a separate Telepresence Server. I looked at the comments following the post, and two of them (from Ulli and from Jorg) call for more products similar to the Tandberg Telepresence Server from other vendors. Now that I have some experience with TTPS, I am trying to imagine what would happen if Polycom and LifeSize decided to follow Tandberg’s example and develop TTPS-like servers, let’s call them Polycom Telepresence Server (PTPS) and LifeSize Telepresence Server (LSTPS). In this version of the future, the only way for telepresence systems from Polycom, LifeSize, and Tandberg to talk is by cascading the corresponding Telepresence Servers. Calls would go TPX-PTPS-TTPS-T3 or TPX-PTPS-LSTPS-LS Room 100, i.e., we are looking at double transcoding plus endless manual configuration of cascading links. I really believe this separate server approach represents a backward step on the road to interoperability.
Since we had no access to TTPS, Bob Dixon asked Bill Rippon from IBM Research if they could help. I have known Bill since January 2003. At the time, he was testing SIP telephones for a deployment at IBM Palisades Executive Briefing Center and hotel. I was product manager for SIP telephones at Siemens, and naturally very interested in getting the phones certified… Anyway, it was great to hear from Bill again. It turned out Bill had access not only to TTPS but also to an impressive collection of telepresence and other video systems, including Polycom’s largest telepresence system, a 4-screen RPX 400 in Armonk, NY.
Stay tuned for Part 5 about the Tandberg Telepresence Server … http://videonetworker.blogspot.com/2009/10/telepresence-interoperability-part-5.html
The only setback was that we could not find a way around the ‘filmstrip’ generated by Tandberg T3. It did not matter if you connect Rui’s T3 directly to TPX or to Room 100 (point-to-point calls) or if you connect T3 to RMX 2000, T3 always sent a ‘filmstrip’ to third-party systems (http://www.flickr.com/photos/20518315@N00/4015164378/). The only advice we got is that we need a Tandberg Telepresence Server (TTPS) to reconstruct the original three images. Leveraging endpoints to sell infrastructure is not a new idea, but with all due respect to Tandberg, forcing customers to buy Tandberg Telepresence Server just to be able to get the original images generated by each of the three codecs in T3 is borderline proprietary, no matter if they use H.323 signaling or not.
In my blog post http://videonetworker.blogspot.com/2009/08/curious-story-of-resource-management-in.html I have already argued that a standard conference server (MCU) can handle telepresence calls and there is no need for a separate Telepresence Server. I looked at the comments following the post, and two of them (from Ulli and from Jorg) call for more products similar to the Tandberg Telepresence Server from other vendors. Now that I have some experience with TTPS, I am trying to imagine what would happen if Polycom and LifeSize decided to follow Tandberg’s example and develop TTPS-like servers, let’s call them Polycom Telepresence Server (PTPS) and LifeSize Telepresence Server (LSTPS). In this version of the future, the only way for telepresence systems from Polycom, LifeSize, and Tandberg to talk is by cascading the corresponding Telepresence Servers. Calls would go TPX-PTPS-TTPS-T3 or TPX-PTPS-LSTPS-LS Room 100, i.e., we are looking at double transcoding plus endless manual configuration of cascading links. I really believe this separate server approach represents a backward step on the road to interoperability.
Since we had no access to TTPS, Bob Dixon asked Bill Rippon from IBM Research if they could help. I have known Bill since January 2003. At the time, he was testing SIP telephones for a deployment at IBM Palisades Executive Briefing Center and hotel. I was product manager for SIP telephones at Siemens, and naturally very interested in getting the phones certified… Anyway, it was great to hear from Bill again. It turned out Bill had access not only to TTPS but also to an impressive collection of telepresence and other video systems, including Polycom’s largest telepresence system, a 4-screen RPX 400 in Armonk, NY.
Stay tuned for Part 5 about the Tandberg Telepresence Server … http://videonetworker.blogspot.com/2009/10/telepresence-interoperability-part-5.html
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