Will "The Avatar" Bring HD/3D Video Calling to the Enterprise?

Modern, real-time "video calling" technology has existed for more than 40 years. The ATT "Picturephone" was initially demonstrated at the 1964 World's Fair and is considered the first serious attempt to commercialize video calling. But after pushing "Picturephone" into the market for almost 10 years ATT finally gave up on video-telephony in the early 70s.  At its peak there were only 500 Picturephone users and the company finally concluded that its early videophone was a "concept looking for a market". ATT discontinued Picturephone service completely by the late 1970s.

Though the "Picturephone" was the first attempt at mass commercialization of video-calling, the concept itself was envisioned much, much earlier by someone you probably have never heard of; George du Maurier. In 1878, barely two years after the telephone was first patented in the United States, Maurier did this early concept drawing of a combined videophone/wide-screen television he called a "telephonoscope". This drawing appeared as a cartoon in "Punch's Almanac" December 1878.  This drawing and text of an 'electric camera-obscura' is often cited as one of the earliest predictions of television and the videophone both in wide screen formats and on flat screens. If you click on the image above and go to the wiki page for the image you'll see the caption of the cartoon has the following text... "

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"Every evening, before going to bed, Pater- and Materfamilias set up an electric camera-obscura over their bedroom mantel-piece, and gladden their eyes with the sight of their children at the Antipodes, and converse gaily with them through the wire."

Paterfamilias (in Wilton Place): 'Beatrice, come closer, I want to whisper.'

Beatrice (from Ceylon): 'Yes, Papa dear.'

Paterfamilias: 'Who is that charming young lady playing on Charlie's side?'

Beatrice: 'She's just come over from England, Papa. I'll introduce you to her as soon as the game's over?'

It seems that as soon as Edison publicized the audio telephone futurists of the time immediately began to see and speculate on the potential for video telephony. In April 1891, Alexander Graham Bell himself did actually record conceptual notes for an "electircal radiphone" that would provide"....the possibility of seeing by electricity". Bell went on to later predict that: "...the day would come when the man at the telephone would be able to see the distant person to whom he was speaking."

So if the idea of video telephony was envisioned 132 years ago as something that was an inevitable outcome of Edison's telephone, why is it still not in common use?  What’s held the use of video back? Since the 1960s our science fiction entertainment has been predicting broad adoption of real-time video communication on TV and in movies with Star Trek, Star Wars and other works. Why have we not pursued and accepted this concept?

One problem has been cost. In the past the cost of top of the line video was, and still is, high. But as the costs have come down and quality improved we still are not seeing mainstream adoption. Why is adoption of this technology so much slower than other technologies? People have shown in the last 10 years a new willingness to more rapidly accept new technologies like cellphones, mobile internet, Twitter, Facebook ,etc. But video telephony is still not in common use even among younger people who tend to be early adopters.  Why is this true if the cost is now reduced to near zero or zero by the availability of solutions like Skype Video.  If real-time video is now inexpensive or free shouldn't it be finally poised to break into the mainstream?  

Also, a new case can be made that video should is now more necessary and relevant in the context of the 21st century business environment where virtual, offshore and distributed work teams are now the norm. Distributed teams don't get a lot of opportunity for high-fidelity and high-productivity face to face conversations. Regular use of video calling has the potential to offset some of that lost value of regular, face-to-face communication.

Is the problem "Complexity"?  That has been part of it for sure. In the past it seemed that you needed to be a rocket scientist to schedule and set up a multi-site video conference.  This complexity, coupled with a perceived “low value” of the experience compared to an audio call, likely did keep many away. But now even these complexity problems are falling away. Multi-point video use on Skype, Apple's iChat and other video solutions, with most laptops now having built in cameras, is a push button away.

I think the problem may now be reduced to being as simple as the level of quality of the video experience.  

The quality of most video solutions in the past, and still today, is usually not all that good.  Motion on video calls tends to produce choppy jumps in what people see on their screens, and depending on the system, the video clarity was/is also questionable. Now compare that quality with the quality everyone is now getting used to on large TV screens with 1080p resolution on TV broadcast, Imax 3D experiences like the recently popular "Avatar" movie and HD quality DVD movies either via Blue-Ray or on-demand from cable companies. The "Augmented Reality(AR)" video technology used in that movie may be exactly the kind of quantum leap in quality needed for video calling to truly go mainstream.

(Rights owned by 20th Century Fox.)

With the cost reductions in bandwidth continuing at this pace it will soon be financially feasible for every HD TV screen, every HD desktop screen and emerging communication devices to be configured for very high quality, even AR, video. In Enterprise and business-to-business situations the experience produced has the potential to deliver an attractive substitute for the productive face-to-face teaming interactions in the workplace.  These quality interactions have been lost as enterprises have "gone global" and distributed their workforces and partners.

These two critical elements; the globally distributed workforce and the affordability of delivering HD/AR-quality video mean the time is now for video to begin moving into the mainstream. And it only took 130+ years for the planets to align. What do you think?


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