Cheap Video Conferencing for Small-to-Medium Sized Corps?

Jason W. asks: "I work for a medium sized company of about 75 employees. A while back I was asked by our CEO to look into a video conferencing solution. I didn't find much information about setting up a system in house except from Real Networks. The problem was, they wanted $10,000 just to start. We even had a sales visit from a consultant who laughed at us when we didn't want to spend $8-10,000. Like I said, we are a medium sized company, but did I mention we are privately owned? $10,000 is WAY to much for us to spend on what would be, new technology for us. I wanted to poll Slashdot readers, and see if they have any experience in this area. As for our needs, I know we would need to talk from Texas to Washington D.C, and to Virginia. Can we do it from our website? Do we have to have hardware 'stations' on each end? What are your thoughts?"

Polycom

[altp]

We use polycom [polycom.com] camera's here. They are a bit pricey, but do the job. The one advantage they have over the solutions we've tried is that they are self contained. No computer required.

The imaging quality on some of their lower end webcams are questionable though.

Same Situation

[dman123]

Ok, I've been in the same situation. Here's the most important question...

What level of video/audio quality do you need?

If you need something that can pass for a standard TV broadcast instead of M-M-Max Head-Head--------room, you've got to go higher end with $$$ hardware on each end. It's more like a minimum of $10,000 for each end. If you can get away with NetMeeting, then go for it.

Other questions to consider...

Q: Do you need to have a lot of people in on a conversation at one end?
A: $$

Q: Do you need to talk to customers?
A: One sale might make up for the $$$ you spend for a high end solution.

Q: Can you get away with just using the speakerphone?
A: Major savings if you can. Just send your PowerPoints or whatever beforehand and then discuss a few hours later after a quick review.

Q: Will you save $$$ on not having to fly around the country and meet face to face?
A: ?

You need to further define your needs. I am guessing that you told the consultant. If so, the laughing may have been justified.

ICU

[zogger]

I used to video conference all the time with my brother, and this was years ago. On his end he had a pc with a video tv capture card and a cable connection and his regular plain vanilla video camera, on my end I had a cheap serial port web cam and a normal mac tower on dialup. Hmm, I think at the time his box was a 266 with 128 megs ram, I had a 180 with 64 megs. It worked great, he said on his side it was perfectly clear, on my side the frame rate was never high enough for full motion video but fun enough to use, like a series of fast stills. The audio was fine most of the time, and it had a text/chat you could use when it wasn't fine. My cam fried so I don't use it any more. My connection via modem then was dismal, I really think that was the bottleneck of most importance.

I imagine that tech has gotten a lot cheaper and better by now,computers are sure faster so that will help, and there are open source equivalents listed I see. Biggest deal is just the bandwith it seems, the camera/audio/video part is "just there",plug it in and stuff, any computer store has that jazz on the shelf now. I bet you could pull off a basic rig for 200 clams a station. Maybe, just guessing, but 5 years ago my cam was almost 300$, it has GOT to be cheaper and better by now.

Unless you want 50 inch hdtv in sensurround and smell-0-vision, no idea what that costs, but stare at a face on the screen in a window and talk, it's just there.