VCON releases array of enhancements

VCON’s making some news this week with a new product and a bunch of enhancements to existing product lines. First up is a new low-end multipoint control unit – the VCB 1000 – that comes with the ability to stream a version of a conference to non-participants. VCON is looking to snag the customer who needs a no frills conferencing unit and doesn’t want to pay a premium for features they won’t use. Radvision and Polycom both offer more feature-rich competitors to the VCB 1000, which starts around $12,000 for an 8-port MCU. The video stream generated by the unit uses standard IP Multicast technology and can be viewed using VCON’s free Broadcast Viewer or Cisco’s IPTV client.

Enhancements on the product side include Far End Camera Control capability in the Falcon set-top video endpoint and the MediaConnect 9000 PC-based endpoint. VCON is using the recently ratified AnnexQ standard to give users the ability to pan, tilt and zoom a remote camera. Video frame rates and firewall friendliness have also been improved in both units. VCON also said it is looking at implementing the yet-to-be-ratified H.264 video standard once the specification is finalized. Finally, VCON topped off a busy week with news of a new Web conferencing plugin for its IPNexus instant messaging and collaboration server (recently reviewed here). The plugin allows desktop applications such as PowerPoint to be shared with Web viewers via a Java applet.