[cisco-voip] Need suggestion with Video Conferencing setup

[Robert Kulagowski]

Syed Khalid Ali wrote:
> I don't have any experience with Video Conferencing except one that I
> mentioned inmy previous email.
> 
> Not looking for Cisco VTA or something similar. I need to setup video
> conferencing for 8-10 users in a conference room in site-A and 1-user
> in site-B. So need suggestions on the following:
> 
> 1- Should I go with Polycom or Tandberg
>     1.1 What features should I look for

There are probably better lists than this one to use for evaluating 
these requirements.  In our case we used Polycom enpoints (HDX 4002 for 
the personal desktop and HDX 8004 for the room-based setup) and 
Tandberg/Codian infrastructure.  Codian 3241s for local H.320 gateway 
and gatekeeper, Codian 4505 for MCU and Tandberg TMS/VCS for management.

If you're only going to go point-to-point between two sites over IP then 
it's a lot easier and you won't need gateways, gatekeepers and all the rest.

As to what to look for, we knew that we wanted to get rid of our old 
stuff (Viewstation) and that we wanted an up-path to HD.  When we 
evaluated Tandberg 1700s and Edge 95s we found that any fast motion 
would cause extreme pixellation.  This is the "static macroblocks" issue 
with that generation of Tandbergs, and it was too distracting in our 
environment even at very high bitrates.

As far as bang per buck, take a look at Lifesize.

> 2- Bandwidth requirement.

The more, the better.  We have Cogent links at some of our sites and run 
the conferences at 4Mbps.  Add 20% overhead to that for planning purposes.

You can get great looking video using H.264 at 512K.