New Tandberg gateway, H.264 support

Polycom’s made a bunch of news the past two weeks and without fail, Tandberg’s got some news too. It’s like when a McDonald’s goes up, a Burger King is probably not far behind. I digress. The news from Tandberg is actually pretty interesting. First, the company released it’s own gateway product designed to connect ISDN nd IP-based systems. Tandberg created its Gateway because many of the generic products on the market did not support all of the features found in a Tandberg endpoint. This gateway does. It also works with non-Tandberg endpoints.

Also, the company announced that endpoints users can now grab a software upgrade that will give them the ability to use the recently ratified H.264 video compression algorithm. H.264 cuts in half the amount of bandwidth needed to deliver the same quality video as the older H.263 standard. H.264 support in the Tandberg Gateway and MCU won’t be available until the fourth quarter. So for now, customers can only conduct point-to-point calls using the new algorithms.

Lastly, the company has added Microsoft Exchange/Outlook integration into its Tandberg Management System (TMS). What does this mean? Users can reserve video equipment using the same Outlook interface they’re using to schedule the meeting with colleagues.