If I want to add telepresence capabilities to one of my conference rooms do I have to pick one of the “out of the box” systems and give up on the idea of customized rooms?

One of our end-user members writes,"If I want to add telepresence capabilities to one of my conference rooms do I have to pick one of the “out of the box” systems and give up on the idea of customized rooms?"

This Week’s Answer is provided by Michael Brandofino.   Mike is EVP of Video and UC for AVI-SPL, driving the company’s initiatives in video and Unified Communications. He has over 18 years of experience in the video industry.

First, let’s make sure we are on the same page from a terminology perspective. It sounds like the Telepresence you are referring to is the immersive experience which includes a three screen multi-codec solution. These immersive solutions combine monitors (or projectors), audio, video codecs, lighting, and furniture into a room environment that is completely dedicated to video calls. When calling another Telepresence room the visual effect makes the participants feel as if they are in the same room. When deployed properly it is an excellent experience. The challenge many customers face is that the “out of the box” solutions provided by manufacturers are somewhat of a one size fits all approach and require the customer to adapt to the manufacturers vision of what Telepresence should be.  Over the last year or so, the manufacturers have released AV integrator kits, enabling custom development of immersive Telepresence rooms by qualified AV integration companies. The ability to blend the best components of the “out of the box” rooms with unique features for your specific requirements is a great alternative to the standard build provided by the manufacturers. One AV company launched a customizable Telepresence solution called Caméléon, which provides a basic configuration that can then be customized according to the customers room dynamics and requirements. This type of flexibility provides customers with the ability to use the video technology from their preferred manufacturer along with the ability to make it fit into their own vision of what telepresence should be. 

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