In addition to traditional meeting room systems the industry has seen the introduction of many brands of TelePresence systems for the executive boardroom.

TelePresence is a form of videoconferencing whereby the images of the persons at the far-end are lifesize and positioned in such a way that eye-to-eye contact is maintained when looking in different directions at different people around the virtual meeting room table. The TelePresence concept generally relies on multiple screens, multiple cameras, multiple codecs and a large room at each end equipped with suitable furniture to create the lifesize experience.

Because of the multiple codecs used within each of these systems, they are not strictly standards-based, i.e. you need the same system at each end. Pricing of these “telepresence rooms” is at a premium and only intended for the most serious buyers, however, they do offer the ultimate in video conferencing quality and Video Conferencing 2000 is well placed to advice on their use and installation.

Personal TelePresence

The concept of TelePresence has recently been expanded from the definition above, to include “personal-telepresence” systems. Personal TelePresence is being adopted as a term to explain executive meeting room systems that are designed to operate in a standalone form. The advantage of such systems is that they only use a single codec and therefore are international standards based meaning that video calls can be made to/from other types of VC system, unlike true TelePresence systems.