SAN DIEGO – One man's face was ruddy, a woman had moles on her arms, and another man clearly wasn't an antiperspirant user. Their images were appearing on high-definition television, which has caused anxiety for countless appearance-obsessed Hollywood stars.
But these were businesspeople, not actors, and no makeup matted their shiny faces as they sat in a London office while their images appeared on four large TV screens at a conference room at the University of San Diego. Their images were vivid and near-life-size, and video cameras allowed the people in both rooms to make eye contact and talk to each other across more than 6,000 miles.
This is a far cry from traditional video-teleconferencing technology, manufacturers declared at a confab last week. It's something, they said, entirely new: "telepresence."
"The core technology, networks and environment are now in place," said David Allen, chairman and CEO of PangeAir. He was one of about 330 attendees at Telepresence World, the first conference to tout the new technology, which is being offered under various brand names by Cisco Systems, Polycom and other manufacturers as an alternative to traditional video teleconferencing.
Executives who'd rather come home to their families at night than log thousands of frequent flier miles will likely be the first users. Telepresence, one analyst said, is as close as anyone can get to feeling like you're in the same room as someone on the opposite coast.
"If it's important to see body language, to show how (something) works, to zoom in on an artifact or show the thread in a fabric you're designing, to show the graphics for a movie, then telepresence is really important," said Claire Schooley, a senior analyst with Forrester Research.
Telepresence boosters even say they're helping save the Earth. When Cisco sold one of its TelePresence systems to a Canadian company, it declared that the technology is helping the company meet its "environmental and carbon-reduction goals."
Cisco's TelePresence system comes in handy during a tense moment in an episode of 24.
The technology is brand new and has only reached a tiny percentage of the video teleconferencing market. It's also extremely expensive: A setup at a few sites and a year's worth of expenses – including major outlays for bandwidth – might cost $500,000. And companies are still establishing standards so their systems can talk to each other.
Still, the technology delivers a certain wow factor. In the demonstration by Teliris at the San Diego conference, an audience of corporate reps sat in a conference room and talked to employees in London.
On both sides of the pond, microphones embedded in the tables and video cameras above the 57-inch TV screens captured images and sound; in San Diego, voices appeared to come directly from the images of the people speaking in London.
Not everything was perfect. A couple ghosts appeared on the screens, and a computer presentation on a 70-inch screen loaded slowly; a presenter blamed the latter problem on bandwidth issues. And the 2-inch spaces between the four main LCD TV screens cut off the London participants when they waved their arms; Teliris is working on shrinking the separation.
Overall, though, the communication between the San Diego and London groups was smooth and natural.
Will companies be willing to pay the extra money for what one conference attendee called "glorified" video teleconferencing? That's far from clear, but so far, Teliris has landed big name clients including Merck, Qualcomm and Disney.
A forecast by Wainhouse Research predicts that the telepresence market will grow by 100 percent over each of the next four years, although the firm doesn't expect the industry will reach the $1 billion mark by 2011.
