This transcript is from a PodTech.net podcast at:
http://www.podtech.net/home/technology/1351/cisco-makes-videoconferencing-cool-with-new-telepresence-systems

Guest: Mike Vizard - Ziff Davis
Host: Robert Scoble - Scoble Show

Robert Scoble - Scoble Show
Hello! I am Robert Scoble and this is the Scoble Show. First of all, before I get started I just want to say thank you to Seagate for sponsoring my show. I am using a Seagate hard drive to produce all the video for the show and you're actually in my home studio here. So, welcome to my home. Today, we have really some interesting video from Cisco. I walked in on a press conference -- they put me into a press conference that was going on in this room and I saw a guy I know Mike Vizard who seemed like he was sitting across the room but he actually wasn't -- and join in and will discover that together.

Mike Vizard - Ziff Davis
Mike Vizard Senior Vice-President, Ziff Davis occasional member of the Gillmor gang.

Speaker
Yeah, hey, what's up?

Speaker
And I am (Inaudible) with the (Inaudible) channels of integration with Cisco.

Molly Borden - Cisco PR
Great and I am Molly Borden (ph) Cisco PR as well.

Madley Waltermin
And I am Madley Waltermin (ph) who stepped back outside just for a few minutes to get our next person.

Molly Borden - Cisco PR
All right.

Speaker
Okay. Excellent.

Speaker
We (Inaudible) up here. This is unbelievable.

Speaker
Is this your first experience with it?

Speaker
This is my -- yeah, and I have never seen something like this.

Speaker
(Inaudible). So, Robert this is what we call Telepresence.

Robert Scoble - Scoble Show
Okay.

Speaker
And what we're trying to position is, this is a new category, you might look at this and say, "Hey, isn't this video conferencing?." Well, there is a couple of things that are different. So, first of all it's a LifeSize, life like experience. So these people are 10EDP (ph) they are on 65-inch plasma displays, which means they are as big as you and I - we are not scaling them down.

Speaker
I was hoping that they would drop me about 25% but it is not happening.

Speaker
Now that (Inaudible) speaking (ph) about the gray hairs or -- so unfortunately the resolution is good enough so that you can see all the gray hairs and all the other things but let me just look at that bottle there, we have Aquafina bottle, you can read that label right?

Speaker
Yeah.

Speaker
So...

Female Speaker
That's good overlooking (ph).

Speaker
You know there's...

Female Speaker
And you guess a little bit.

Speaker
You noticed there is a minoch (ph) there; we call that the minoch, that has a technical term and I (Inaudible) that you're sitting in the right place. There's a couple of things missing here; one of the things missing is, there is no remote control.

Speaker
Everything you had it? Even though...

Speaker
That's right. You can reach across. So, there was no remote control, there was no zoom - yeah.

Speaker
You can reach across.

Speaker
(Inaudible).

Speaker
Right. There is no remote control facility. So, in fact, some people look at this and say, "Hey, wait a minute, so how come I can't see myself?" Well, you know, when you are in a meeting, you don't see yourself, you just participate. And so one of the things we try to do is, control the whole experience, which includes controlling for, you know, that that wall there is the same color as this wall. If you look at a table (Inaudible). It's the same table at the other end and the idea is all about this suspension of disbelief; the idea that we are present in the same room, and it's telepresence because it looks and feels like an extension of this room. And so, the optical illusion that we're trying to create is that if we do this well it should feel like we're talking to them essentially maybe through a window or pane of glass, but essentially we're in the same room. Now, making that possible, we've got H.264 high definition - true high definition, we're not upscaling -- it's a high definition source coming from those three high definition cameras. 30 frames a second and this is going through in IP network. So, sit (ph) based which means that the only endpoint necessary to control this call is this one. When we say it's as easy as making a phone call, it's not an idle promise because that is exactly how you establish telepresence calling. You dial in the number, or if you like in this case, it was registered and planned ahead of time. You go in Outlook, you drag the room with Outlook and it shows up on the phone; you push a button and there you go.

Speaker
Now, what does a room like this cost?

Speaker
So, room like this, this is what we call a Triple; we're now seeing in fact our Triple and a Single; a Single is just one screen and the Triple is obviously three screens. So, this -- price for this is about $300,000 and for a Single, its about $80,000. So, we positioned this initially for high end enterprises, for collaboration, but you can imagine what this is going to do in terms of applications in retail, in banking, so imagine going into a neighborhood bank and saying, "Hey Robert, I'd like to speak to our mutual fund advisor and, oh, by the way, he is in New York as opposed to the 20-year old that hired (ph) who has just come back from community college and can he get to speak to the real deal for them (ph) mostly.

Speaker
The triple limit is two people per frame?

Speaker
Yeah, so that the (Inaudible) is that we've limited -- in fact, to get you LifeSize we can get two people on them, I mean you could in theory almost do three but then you can sit in really, really close. Now, while in Europe that's not a problem.

Speaker
I could display here.

Speaker
Exactly.

Female Speaker
It looks like a band.

Speaker
So, in fact, and there are number of innovations, so you're right, the screen has been sized for two people -- another innovation -- and talking about the different innovations that make this possible you have things like extremely low latency technology. So, behind the scenes what you don't see is in fact a compression device, a Codec that essentially has 70 microprocessors in it; it's a small supercomputer five...

Speaker
Oh, Intel likes you.

Speaker
So, they like us because its competitionally tempted (ph) but it is -- you need to be, in order to get high definition video compressed to what we're doing here, which is about three to three and a half megabits per screen. So, that's incredibly good compression.

Speaker
Yeah, it's pretty good. And we are not -- we used to do stuff like this to see how good video frame...

Speaker
Exactly, so...

Speaker
How much power does the thing draw and how much of a lining (ph) expert you have to be to make it all kind of click (ph).

Speaker
So, the good news is, you don't need any kind of special building plant information to put this in. So, everything you see in the room actually comes with the room with the exception of the chair. So, when you order one of these from us, you get the screens, the camera, the phone, the lighting unit, all of that is part and parcel of the equipment. However, the biggest draw on energy are the three plasma screens. So, I don't know the exact power draw of the plasma screen, but I think probably about 300 watts if I am not mistaken. So, the lighting itself is fluorescent, not a great draw, and then the actual Codec, which is like a high-end PC, so talking maybe 250-300 watts.

Speaker
So, if I am going to set up a room, I got to add the cost of getting you know like, in this room here, there are eight A/C outlets and there is the lighting that's on top of the 300,000.

Speaker
The room fit out, (ph) in fact we don't have -- we haven't done anything special for our room (Inaudible) room with a different color of paint on the wall; so it's been...

Speaker
That won't be introduced (ph) when you're in New York either. If I am not mistaken, all the lighting that was here is the one that we've utilized for this particular room.

Speaker
Right, and what they have is essentially the actual projection lighting, which is part of the 300,000 that comes with the unit.

Speaker
This is the (Inaudible) room in New York City with eight outlets on one wall.

Speaker
It looked pretty good at that time and you buy a (Inaudible) and that will set you back another 30 bucks.

Speaker
And the (Inaudible) is part of the set that you just delivered?

Speaker
Yeah, that's part of the outfit.

Speaker
Does Cisco come out and set this up?

Speaker
Yes, indeed; so that's a good point. You know, one of the things we're trying to guarantee here is experience; and to do that, you need to control the things like sound and the actual lighting of the room itself and so, some people who look at this say, "Hey, this is great, we've got a room with a view, with windows on all three sides, it'd be fantastic," - that's actually the worst kind of room because you can't control the lighting, or if you have a lot of glass you get a lot of reverberation. So, part of what we're doing is -- we announced this -- is, when a customer wants to buy this, you have to buy a service component that comes with it, that actually controls for this, and so part of the -- what we call the telepresence experience - TPX, sort of mimicked after THX, like when you go into a movie theatre and see THX, you think one thing which is great out (ph). When you use a telepresence room, we want to guaranty a telepresence experience, which means we're going to come in here with sound meters and light meters, test the network as well because of course, for this to work, we need high performance low latency network endeavoring (ph) and we can only do that if we actually do that assessment upfront with the customer.

Speaker
Are you going to sell these to like Kinkos (ph) or other stores where I could walk in and an hour (ph) on one of these?

Speaker
Well, that's actually a great idea; in fact, some others have suggested it as well, they've said, why don't you go into hotels or business centers and that's a really interesting idea, in fact in many of the business centers and hotels as you know aren't actively used because getting to rent a PC is not a great value add these days, but getting to use a suite like this could be of great interest, and especially for those hotel chains that have multiple hotels throughout the world I could say, hey, I've got three locations, here are some of my people for those three locations, you guys do the catering, the lodging and we'll use this for six hours a day. So...

Speaker
So, when (Inaudible) goes under you can rent out (Inaudible) for people who coming (Inaudible).

Speaker
No comment.

Female Speaker
That okay?

Speaker
It wasn't a Cisco (Inaudible).

Speaker
The hotel industry, I did have a conversation with one of the hotel individuals that saw this technology and they wanted to set up virtual dinning where they would actually set up one screen in a room and they would actually serve a meal at the same time that the other person on the other side and literally they would give the experience that two individuals being in two parts of the world having dinner together.

Speaker
Yes.

Speaker
All right. That would be interesting.

Speaker
Let me borrow your conference room.

Speaker
We could have geeked it as (Inaudible) Warner. (ph)

Speaker
Well, thinking about borrowing the rooms, we are actually building a hundred and ten of these inside Cisco. So, we have deployed 20 of them internally so far and we are rolling out -- and we are scheduled to be done in the next nine months, which means we'll have pretty much most of our large offices covered.

Speaker
What are you learning by doing that; what have you planned?

Speaker
Okay, so we are (Inaudible) in the early days of deploying it, but there is a couple of things we learnt, one of them was, for example for our own telepresence group we are looking for -- to hire a general manager. And we had a candidate in Texas and we said "Oh! Don't bother flying in, drive into our Dallas office and we'll do a telepresence interview, which in fact for interviews is probably one of the killer apps for smaller organizations. You can think about it because you don't know Edison for example, but if you think about speaking with Edison now for an hour or two, do you still want him to fly out or do you say hey, that's good enough for me, I know what I need to know.

Speaker
Yeah. That brings up all kinds of speed dating issues and...

Speaker
So social networking implications here.

Speaker
You can put these like three doors apart and have (Inaudible) icon (ph) and it would be like a (Inaudible).

Speaker
Right.

Speaker
I don't like that person...

Speaker
So, one of these, you asked about...

Speaker
(Inaudible).

Speaker
So you asked about the other business implications, so one of the things I've written I could be doing at Cisco is, our rooms when they are not in use, we will also enable them -- for our partners to bring customers in. So we want to jumpstart people getting comfortable with this technology and we are -- for example, our head of sales for US and Canada, Rob Lloyd wants to take us -- if he wants to actually install these at some of our large customer sites, so they would have a Cisco room and when they want to talk to one of our executives, they would essentially just use that as a quick way of getting in touch. Rob, in particular is very ambitious; he basically wants to see less travel but more interactions and in fact with this kind of technology for our senior people, he thinks we can increase the number of customer interactions by five.

Speaker
What kind of number of connection do you have for now?

Speaker
Sure. So one of the things that I mentioned just before you just got in is that each of these screens is 10EDP (ph) compared to using H.264. Each of the screens transmits about 3 to 3.5 Megabits. So for this entire setup you are going from 9 till about 12 Megabits per second. It's all IP - it's basically configured as a sit and run; (ph) so what you are looking at here is, for the network, a big phone - a very big phone.

Speaker
So these are HD cameras?

Speaker
That's right. The cameras are HD and the displays are HD -- that's important but that's -- you can go to Cosco and buy a DVD upscale or take a Standard Definition image and then try to upscale it -- but you are not getting more information - this is native HD - its also of 30 frames a second, so its extremely responsive and then its also full of spatial audio so when somebody on the left speaks, you hear them on the left, on the right, on the right. And over the network itself, its either going to be over private line, so I have got a leased line and I can have that capacity or over what's called an MPLS network, which is essentially a shared infrastructure that most high end enterprises are starting to embrace. And then in terms of the local connectivity, probably to get this kind of bandwidth you would want (Inaudible).

Speaker
Are you looking at any other display or camera technology that you incorporate in those solutions going forward down the road?

Speaker
Yeah, so we have a -- we are looking at all of that; in fact, some of the things that we are going to be announcing after we launch in December will be things like multi-point, so we are just doing San Jose (ph) to New York; but you can imagine, New York, London, Paris or even more locations and then switching them out to (Inaudible) speaking, we'll be able to support up to 40 locations simultaneously. In terms of other display technologies, yes, for example for the heat or the power, we would like to replace these ultimately with LCD, and that will draw about half the power; but today's 65 inch LCD panels are very rare, whereas the plasma is starting to get common, but its pretty easy to do, "I mean this is connected via an HDMI connection", so if you give me an HD projector -- rear projector, I can do that - I could potentially project something the size of this room if you give me a big enough wall to project on.

Speaker
How about using a whiteboard? Could I use a whiteboard behind me?

Speaker
You could, definitely you could just...

Speaker
How about just document share?

Speaker
You could use document sharing. So one of the things that -- you may want to just connect that -- so, the other thing to make it really simple is, today we are doing document sharing -- on the back.

Speaker
Thank you.

Speaker
How did this project (Inaudible)?

Speaker
I can just project here on the side of my garage.

Speaker
So the screen, the white panel that you have in front of you is what we are going to be using to project slides; there is actually a projector hidden underneath this table. So that projects e-mail, PowerPoint, whatever you have got on your laptop; no need for any additional collaboration technology - you plug it in and it's live. Then to your point Robert about another whiteboard - we have the ability to include other ports or other types of internet-based traffic. So, if you can take a whiteboard signal and capsulate it over IPM somewhere, which is pretty easy I mean, there is so much of intelligent (ph) whiteboard that can do that, then we can send it along. So we are looking at additional displays, additional user interfaces, so recently on U2 you have seen (Inaudible) of people using gesture recognition displays and maps.

Speaker
Yeah.

Speaker
So we can think of a number of ideas, one of them being to project on to the table itself and using the surface of the table as another alternative display technology.

Speaker
All right, so put (Inaudible).

Speaker
All right.

Speaker
Hold on, where do I get my technical difficulties sorted out?

Speaker
You got to change the resolution too.

Speaker
We are (Inaudible) of whether it's holographics?

Speaker
Holographics. So, we actually have done some calculations; now, the problem with holographics is, you need about ten times the bandwidth; and the display technology -- so holographic static images are becoming available; holographic moving images, aside from projecting things like steam or water vapor isn't the best. So that's being started, but I think before we get there we are going to see applications of this for schools, we are going to see applications for this for Telemedicine, because one of the cool ideas with this is that -- for example, stroke victims, there is a certain medicine that if you suffered a stroke they can inject you and it actually unblocks the blood clot, but it has to be given within four hours. And the challenge is that it's not for everyone; and for the doctor to diagnose if you are a good candidate, they have to see you. And in fact they have to see your eye because it is a problem that's related to your pupil, and so they can only do that kind of a diagnosis remotely if the resolution is good enough. And they are trying to do this over standard definition as a hospital in Canada was trying to do this, but we believe at this, it could be good enough. So you could do a lot more in terms of the Telemedicine.

Speaker
Talking about U2 Mike, is it capable of recording this room to a file and then put it up on U2 versus...

Speaker
So when we release -- not yet. So, the image we are seeing down here is in fact not U2, but it's my boss's assistant and she moved from the bay area to Richardson, Texas, a while ago and you can see that this is a prototype unit because you witnessed the camera dangling on this cable; that's not finalized of course, and somebody kindly has put some muffins (ph) out of range for her, but she actually is on telepresence 8 hours a day from Texas.

Speaker
We call it "Virtual Margaret."

Speaker
Virtual Margaret, yeah Margaret Hospital (ph).

Speaker
But there of course is a (Inaudible) to add that network image.

Speaker
Sure. There's two things we can very easily add, because this is all IT based; one is to record things and the other is to multicast that. So imagine that we are having this meeting, but now I'd like to share this meeting with a thousand of my closest friends; nothing easier, I just basically put this signal over multicast and then anybody with a multicast application on their laptop could essentially view that in real time or record and play back. So, that won't be available from day one, but relatively easy to add on to the product in future.

Speaker
Can you bring somebody else into the conversation, which is not (Inaudible).

Speaker
Okay. That's a great question, so we can today, so one of the things we can do is, we have conferencing capability, so we can bring him in via audio and we can also, of course, use standard web collaboration tools like, from MeetingPlace or WebEx or other technologies, and so could bring in people that way -- that's the natural way - but probably most likely going to be audio when somebody (Inaudible) on the road on the mobile phones, which is actually a good point. I think it's -- well everyone carries these, these days. One of the really annoying things is how they cause interference and what you know is, there's nothing. And this is live, it's on, and we actually designed our own microphones; this is a shielder microphones that don't generate interference to the TelePresence.

Speaker
But really, is all of these standard equipment or did Cisco have a custom element to each of their components?

Speaker
So, a lot of the elements started with standard components, but for the most part we have customized a lot of it, including the cameras and the displays. One of the key things we are minimizing for is overall latency; and so Robert you said it earlier, if you do this, do you notice the lag? - You don't notice the lag for the most part because we can go glass to glass in 150 milliseconds, which is about three times better than (Inaudible) components. The reason that is important is, because from 400 milliseconds on up, you notice the lag; the lip syncing doesn't work anymore or you get sort of the 19:56 effect when I move my head, my head doesn't actually move on your end. So, because we are 150 milliseconds end-to-end, that basically says there's another 250 for network transport and 250 milliseconds if your network is designed like, gets you (Inaudible) around the planet.

Speaker
Sort of, in between New York and Singapore.

Speaker
That's right. We can do that. In fact, in another week's time we will be doing exactly that because we are going to Hong Kong and then we would be sitting (ph) in Singapore. And we are going to do our 'Follow the Sun' global launch.

Speaker
So, will you be able to run -- I got the whiteboard that -- but I'm wondering, would I be able to run an application (Inaudible) at every conference where I could be looking at an SAP general ledger issue during my board conference meeting.

Speaker
Sure. We can do that today; so, just by merely plugging in the PC, it sends everything on the PC to the other end, whether that's my e-mail, my PowerPoint slides, or the transaction application.

Speaker
So we are not (Inaudible) here in New York yet for that?

Speaker
Well, we can oh I see. No I think it should be -- essentially it's just a matter of the projected. Did you see the image of Zody (ph) with Michael?

Speaker
No.

Speaker
Sorry. So we have a slight problem with the New York room; but essentially anything that's on the laptop goes through the VGA cable and you then send it.

Speaker
Well, I heard by the way, just for the record that that feature is just going to be added here next week. So, we are just in the process of getting ready for the announcement, just a brief conversation about yet.

Speaker
Yeah, the (Inaudible) that's available; so, it's just a matter that the New York room -- not just the wall, I think the paint just dries out because...

Speaker
(Inaudible).

Speaker
Right, because they are (Inaudible).

Speaker
You should put a little sign saying, where the location of the...

Speaker
We would be adding that in fact.

Female Speaker
Actually this morning, everybody asked us to go out and get the newspaper; they didn't believe this. They were like, I don't believe you guys are really New York (Inaudible) - we had to bring in the newspaper so...

Speaker
(Inaudible).

Speaker
So yeah, we will be actually adding signs to try and indicate where they are calling into, because we are getting confused given the 20 rooms, we are now saying, oh
you got Hong Kong or you -- so, yeah, we get confused.

Speaker
(Inaudible).

Speaker
Do you -- will you have any capability to zoom in the cameras at all or...

Speaker
No, none. So, one more thing that we're really trying to absolutely engineer for is the complete experience; in a moment, you zoom, you pan, you tilt - now all of a sudden, your eye and your brain is (Inaudible) this is not real, this is something else. Whereas the hoped for illusion is that after 30 minutes you completely forget that they are actually not here in the room with you, because that's the way it is, right? You speak in a natural tone, you have natural volume - I don't have to do anything, I just sit and even for the ergonomics, these (Inaudible) here and everything guides you to sit in the right place, that's the purpose. One of the other things about the table being part of the system is, it forces you to sit at the focal (ph) of this thing. So there's no need to focus the camera. It would be focused at this distance.

Speaker
(Inaudible) I can't turn him on?

Speaker
So, that is also -- that's -- if you don't like what he's saying, (ph) you can always talk louder or ignore him.

Speaker
Do you having a negotiation between us and another company or another area and we want to go offline for a second, but not terminate the call - other than going mute, is there anything we can do?

Speaker
Turn to the side.

Female Speaker
So, how was...

Speaker
(Inaudible) I mean that I do believe that you can pause it right?

Speaker
You can put it on hold.

Speaker
You can put it on hold; you can put the call on hold.

Speaker
Yeah. So when you put it on hold, we won't see anything on this end right?

Speaker
Yeah. Right.

Speaker
If two companies want to use this and they are on different networks, I know you are multipoint. But if they are on different networks, service provider will have to get to the middle of that and do the calculation?

Speaker
Correct. It's a great question and in fact, we are working with our service provider colleagues right now. So, there are two scenarios; one is company A, company B, where they have a common service provider, which is actually for the service provider, a pretty easy case because they can say, "Hey! We connect both of you guys; you guys want to connect? We will solve it. Now, it's not the hard part. The hard part is, when you're going company A to company B and there are two service providers, one for A and one for B. Now what's required is essentially what they have been able to do in the voice world for decades now, which is, I don't know which long distance provider you use, but I just dialed your number and it connects. So, we have been able to solve addressing and billing and quality of service. We need to solve the same, but today they're doing that in the traditional TDM world; we need to solve for that in the IP world, and we need to solve in addition to that some security issues as well. People probably want to encrypt TelePresence, so Directory, quality of service, and billing. Now the good news in terms of quality of service, we tag these packets with a quality of service tag that says, this is really important stuff; don't drop it. So, if the service provider can align their quality of service offerings to say, "My SLA for this type of traffic is this; your SLA is this, they need to align them" - that's not a technical problem, it's a management issue, which is, how do they define their commercial SLA's and align them. So we're looking at trying to get a few of our service providers to get together and collaborate. We are also talking through forums like ITU and Ipsphere to try to get some standardization moving, so that they can work this out. Ultimately, this is not unique to TelePresence; the scenario I'm describing is just as valid for IP Telephony when it stays IP all the way. Today, IP Telephony can sometimes go through the TDM network to go back into IP on the receiving end ultimately, and the service providers know this; the world is going IP end to end. Those tradition voice TDM networks are going to wither away, which means we need to be able to establish voice calls, but also TelePresence calls. The reason why TelePresence makes it compelling is that it's two orders of magnitude bigger than a voice call, which is why they want to solve for TelePresence because they believe it's a pretty lucrative service, so they want to solve this problem, it's mostly a governance and process problem, not really a technical problem. We have demonstrated in LA, (ph) end-to-end MPLS based calls across two simulated service providers, and it works fine. So, we have...

Speaker
They have a lot of platforms that they are trying to use to deliver this type of service, but you're trying again to move to an IP network and...

Speaker
So that's the good news; I think compared to something like say, IP telephony, which is really displacing an existing offering that they have, and that's one of the challenges that service providers may have is say, "Look, hey, I'm doing telephony today, you want me to do IP telephony, I got all these investments ready." There isn't anything really like this; I mean, the closest thing to this would be essentially just commercial video conferencing but we don't think that really plays in the same category.

Speaker
Is there a market for ATM based TelePresence in (Inaudible) or...?

Speaker
Well, there could be; so in a sense, as long as it carries IP traffic at the right delay, packet loss and jitter, we don't care ultimately what the underlying transporter is; if it's ATM, it will work fine. All we specify is, can you get 10 to 12 Megabits from A to B in less than or equal to 250 milliseconds with 0.01% packet loss and 30% millisecond jitter. If you can, be my guest.

Speaker
What would setting up the (Inaudible) like?

Speaker
You talk of how to do that?

Speaker
Yeah.

Speaker
You either dial the number, and each of the rooms has an extension, or if I pre-configure it, which is I know this is going to call 1 Meg (ph), I went into outlook and I dragged this room and that room into the Outlook inbox (ph) and then it appeared on the phone, just like it says right now, and then I just click on the phone and it sets up the call.

Speaker
The Outlook is scheduled to schedule the rooms?

Speaker
Yes. They appear in Outlook just like any meeting room you would reserve ordinarily - it says that behind the scenes, what it's also doing is, configuring the phone at both ends, so that it presents itself on the phone.

Speaker
If I had somebody in AVS over Skype or some other low end, could I drag in them in to one (Inaudible)?

Speaker
It's got video, audio or both?

Speaker
It's got video and audio, or something like that.

Speaker
Not over (Inaudible) video today, you needed (ph) to have another device that essentially would do standard def or extreme phase II 3-to-3 (ph).

Speaker
We are getting a crunchy sound from your (Inaudible).

Speaker
I am sorry, I am banging on the table here with my (Inaudible) tape.

Speaker
So, the switching in voice and video from other non high-definition sources means you have to convert. And today that would be done through an MCU unit; we don't make one yet. We have partners like RADVISION that are interested in doing that. One of the challenges we see over it is that we really want to position TelePresence as the new category because we don't think video conferencing has ever crossed the chasm because of the issues it has. So, we are a little bit wary about pitching in non high-definition sources because we think that would destroy the experience.

Speaker
Yeah.

Speaker
May not be relevant but, one of the last (Inaudible) it requires is the last safe harbor's (ph) requires that you call somebody up and have enough social events (Inaudible) enough to record that...

Speaker
Correct.

Speaker
You do it on this though, you are going to have to record that for most -- any kind of corporate kind of...

Speaker
You don't have to record; I mean, we are not recording this.

Speaker
We are not having a business transaction per se, there would be really in -- inside your own company and your executive and you are having a conversation, there is some rendezvous somewhere you can come along and say, "You know guys, you need to record that." You would have to record in (Inaudible) phone call?

Speaker
Yeah, I was going to say, we don't record a number of phone calls either (ph).

Speaker
(Inaudible) yeah, they are going to read this like email or I can say you know, reporting email and she reports this or through a phone call.

Speaker
Maybe -- maybe not. I mean voicemail, phone calls, I think there's still interpretations as to what do you need to store or not...

Speaker
It wouldn't be hard to put a little camera and record the room now.

Speaker
Yeah.

Speaker
Sort of like, I am only doing a little bit...

Speaker
That's right. Now you could do it (Inaudible) level, I mean, if you really needed to record it, it's very easy to do, because you can do (Inaudible) multitasking or just (Inaudible).

Speaker
You know, the recording (Inaudible) as well you know, that's just (Inaudible) and you know, (Inaudible).

Speaker
It will mean a lot of storage; that's for sure. This is (Inaudible) high bandwidth I got a sponsor Seagate, who has (Inaudible) hard drives and...

Speaker
That's right. Just one of these, I want to lead you because the idea though is that so think about this unit today. Using the traditional price performance curves of networking technologies. So, you talk about Morris (ph) law, which is every 18 months, semiconductor price performance doubles. If you track networking technology though, networking technologies where there is bandwidth or devices or just basically speeds (ph) or circuits, they basically double every 12 months. So, if this technology would have followed the same logic, you could pick up one of these in five years time for less than $10,000. You could pick up the single in five years time for less than $3000 dollars. So, that's what people are spending today on high-definition plasma displays or LCD screens. Now, think about this in terms of your home, small medium businesses, retailing. So, when you get to those price points and there are -- some of the feedback you sometimes get is, wow, this looks high-end, but just watch.

Speaker
Do you think multi courses (Inaudible) accelerate that?

Speaker
Well, certainly. I mean, so we have 70 digital signal processing units which are all dual core today inside of the Codec as we move to quadcore, (ph) which is coming in the next couple of months. All of that - and then of course moving more to A6, (ph) we will help move the technology to smaller and cheaper form factors (ph) that's how we get that price performance doubling every 12 months.

Speaker
(Inaudible) any of these in the executive terms?

Speaker
Are we going to this? Well, you know, efficiently I can just predict what's going to happen and the Cisco executives start using this, which is people like Edison and others say like, hang on, I just moved into a new home, I got Verizon 5 off high speed access -- 10 megabits, no problem, bring it on. So, I think what will probably happen first of all, especially here in the Silicon Valley area, think about all those people on Sand Hill Road and think about the people in Menlo Park in general. I mean, there's a lot of small businesses that actually wield a lot of influence in terms of capital and for them this is very, very justifiable, even at the price points (Inaudible) coming out today.

Speaker
You still need the MPLS connections?

Speaker
So, they would probably subscribe to a metro internet kind of connection, or some kind of fibre to the home high-speed access to get -- to be able to do the (Inaudible) megabits. Now, if you are on a single, you don't need 10 to 12, so single is good, so are two to three and a half.

Speaker
But we got (Inaudible) as you say that because I just got a note from the (Inaudible) in my home that they are now going to be running fibre to the home and -- but then it came to my mind was, one of these is in my house somewhere. There's no question that, that will probably happen.

Speaker
And I think (Inaudible) where we are.

Speaker
But we can think of certain professions; you think about legal experts; you think about talent recruits for sporting events. I mean, there are a lot of these experts out there whose time is literally a lot of money, 1000's of dollars per day. They could do how much more business if they didn't have to travel everywhere they went? So, those are probably the early adopter (ph) SOHO markets that we can identify (Inaudible).

Speaker
I won't (ph) see people sleeping in the streets, trying (ph) new auditions for America's top model and it's...

Female Speaker
Do you have any last minute questions? (Inaudible) pretty short on time. Does Edison have a chance to tell us how the channels that support this...?

Speaker
Well, I am covering it on this end so, if you wanted to cover on that end, we are having a pretty detailed conversation on the (Inaudible).

Speaker
Perfect. We just do it. Unfortunately, I have got another appointment I need to go to. Nice meeting you.

Speaker
Thank you very much.

Speaker
(Inaudible) thank you very much.

Speaker
(Inaudible) make the call here.

Female Speaker
Thanks guys.

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