Rating: 3 WaterTowers (corporate infrastructure needed)
Making a Point-to-Point Call
After installation (which was easy even with the Beta version Sean Lessman from Tandberg gave me access to), I decided to give Movi a whirl by first calling an H.323 Endpoint.
My friend, Sheila at Fermi Lab sent me the IP address of an HD system she is testing…let’s see if I can connect.
Clicking on the Movi icon in the system tray, this screen comes up.
Sean previously told me that I could call an H.323 system by dialing @ipaddress. I will give that a try. You can also call using URI which basically means you can connect to Sean, for example, at his email address Sean.lessman@tandberg.com. Pretty cool! 🙂
Back to Sheila…..I put in her IP address and made the call. After quite a delay, where I almost hung up, I was connected to Sheila’s test HDX 8004 Polycom just long enuf to snap a picture and chat a bit before she had to go to work (hmmmm, work? I sort of remember that concept..).
TelBitConsulting says: Video was terrific, audio was terrific! I dialed an H.323 EP easy as can be. The conversation was normal..no tripping over our words, clear, and crazy (uh…that is normal with us!)
In a call we made last week (just to catch up), Sheila had complained about my audio (with another system) but this time she said it was great. The difference could be the Movi which has echo cancellation, or the Phoenix Duet that I installed a few days ago (see the blog directly below this one), or a combination of the two.
You can hang up the call by clicking the red phone icon on the bottom right.
Calling an MCU
Let’s call another friends, Christian’s, Codian in Paris, France.
Interestingly, since Movi is a Tandberg product as is the Codian, there is no Far End Camera control to get into the meeting using the up / down / left / right arrows. I say no more. 😉
You can get into a meeting if you know the ID number, or start a new meeting, using the DTMF keypad.
Anyway…the call worked fine, but, I suspect everyone was sleeping in France when I connected. The picture below shows my video at the end of a round trip to Paris and back.
Very nice quality. 🙂
For jollies, I took a look at the call status.
You can see the connection was at 768 kbps both ways (gotta love the TracyVirtualOffice network!) and it was very good.
There is the ability see the video in full screen. The next shot shows that.
Some Other Features
You can add a contact.
You can check the calls you have made.
You can set your bandwidth
There are also a self view, video mute, audio mute, a volume control, and a few other settings.
Interestingly, if I were to call Sean, the centralized infrastructure handling this call, will ring all of Sean’s locations. No matter where he is, he will be able to pick up the call. How cool is that? No more sitting in an office all day long, now you can go to the TracyVirtualOffice and the Tandberg infrastructure will find you!
What is Not Available
At this time, but, it may happen, you cannot do application sharing, and there is no chat. There is also no far end camera control. I say no more. 😉
In short, this is a video tool.
Summary
Movi is a very capable videoconferencing application. It will include non-video collaboration tools as time goes on or demand dictates. It interoperates easily with H.323 (and SIP) endpoints, and, is easy to install and use.
My only concern is that this is, once again, a desktop videoconferencing application geared for the corporate user. The single person, like myself, is left out. Also no Mac version or Linux/Unix. Only Windows.
Sean and I will connect next week so I can make a YouTube video….so check back for that!
TechyMike: Technology Made Easy 