All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links.
Sometimes, when you want to reach out and touch someone, you'd really like to be able to see that person, too. Videoconferencing has been available for quite some time, but not like this. TeleSuite Corporation has entered the market with teleconferencing technology for the public at The Beverly Hilton Hotel and affiliated properties, as well as in private suites in corporate offices across the country.
To put it to the test, I enter the Hilton's TeleSuite, a small room garishly decorated with faux columns, and sit down at a semicircular table that could easily accommodate a half dozen people. Chatting with TeleSuite's Scott Allen, who speaks to me from beautiful downtown Englewood, Ohio, I'm immediately struck by the fact that this is no television-set-with-a-videocam setup. My table is flush against a wall that holds a back-projected 100-inch diagonal video screen on which Allen appears. The sound quality is quite good - full duplex, of course - but most impressive is a pair of cameras hidden in fake flowers on the table that let us maintain eye contact. (TeleSuite has a patent for what it calls the video mirror effect.) Allen appears life size, so it's nothing like looking at a big-screen TV. It's more like an actual conversation.
There's no man behind the curtain running this show, just a rack of equipment, including a basic PC, line doublers, video decks, and a pair of three-gun, high-end NEC video projectors. TeleSuite uses T1 lines with proprietary compression. Mikes and speakers are built into the table. This seamless interface represents three years of development in partnership with IBM, IBM Global Network, NEC, Panasonic, and CLI.
TeleSuite's technology has limitless applications beyond traditional business meetings. Teleconferencing could easily take the place of travel when a trip is either inconvenient or too expensive. But what may drive this platform, as has been the case with everything from video to the Web, is sex. While this technology represents the state-of-the-art means of reaching out and touching someone, it's a safe (sex) bet that teleconferencing will be used to reach out and watch others touch themselves.
##### TeleSuite: US$199 per 50 minutes per location. TeleSuite Corporation: (800) 995 9400. The Beverly Hilton Hotel: +1 (310) 274 7777, (800) 445 8667, on the Web at www.hilton.com/.
STREET CRED
Sweet TeleSuite Unplugging State Science
