Video Conferencing

Introduction

There are a number of different ways for people to communicate in the world today and one of those ways is through the use of video conferencing technology. It is a technology that has primarily been utilized by businesses up to the present day but with the lowering in price of a lot of the technology needed for proper video conferencing it is now starting to become a far more popular way for people to communicate with each other. For people that are not aware of what video conferencing is, here’s the scoop.

Video Conferencing

Video conferencing is a reasonably self-explanatory term that is best illustrated with an example. When businesses used to conference with each other there was always the problem of how to include people not present within the actual conference. These might be people that were out of town on company business or that were home sick that day but were an important part of the conference. For the longest time businesses used conference calls in order to facilitate getting these people involved in the conference. This allowed the missing employees to speak to the rest of the assembled group over the phone from a remote location.

It was a good way to deal with the problem and for awhile telephone conferencing was the gold standard of conferencing solutions. Then came the advent of video conferencing. Through the advent of large monitor screens in business board rooms coupled with the increasing efficiency and effectiveness of webcam technology the idea was pitched that a person could use their web camera in order to broadcast their image along with their voice through the use of the internet; an extension of the phone line voice conferencing principle. Ever since the initial introduction of video conferencing solutions the method has spread like wildfire and is now utilized by all major businesses as well as a large number of smaller businesses and individual proprietorships.

Video Conferencing Setup

In order to effectively use video conferencing there are a number of things you need to have in place. Firstly, there need to be cameras with internet projection capabilities on both ends of the places that are trying to conference with each other. Secondly, there needs to be software on both ends that will allow the conferencing to take place. Thirdly, there needs to be an active connection between the two locations that will monitor and facilitate the video conference.

The first of those three is not very difficult to obtain. The cheapest webcams available today are in some cases less than ten dollars and high quality ones that can be used for serious video conferencing are not particularly expensive either. There is also a lot of cheap software available for this type of conferencing as well and for people that don’t want to pay for any software all you have to do is download an instant messaging program like MSN or Yahoo Instant Messenger as all of these free programs come with video conferencing capability. And finally, a connection between the two locations is very easy to maintain provided the internet connections at both locations are secure and both locations are using the same software package to facilitate the video conferencing.

All in all, video conferencing is a lot easier to set up now than it was a few years ago when it was in its infancy.