In March of this year, I had the good fortune to be introduced to HP SkyRoom, a revolutionary high-definition, PC-based videoconferencing system that promised to completely redefine the business videoconferencing space.

A few seconds ago, they delivered.

HP SkyRoom, at $149 US, is the most affordable, high-definition business videoconferencing solution available right now.

HP SkyRoom is the only videoconferencing tool to offer live collaboration for up to four people over a standard business network for $149 – less than the cost of round-trip airfare from San Francisco to Los Angeles.

“Finally, video meetings with genuine eye contact and natural human interaction are as easy as starting an instant messaging connection,” said Jim Zafarana, vice president and general manager, Workstations, HP. “It takes business productivity and collaboration to a completely new level when we can connect people around the world in a day via HP SkyRoom and let them get home to family dinner and bedtime stories – without the wear and tear of travel.”With HP SkyRoom, users can share any type of application supported on their PC or workstation, including office documents, streaming video and interactive 3-D applications:

• Digital content and engineering teams can collaborate on sophisticated design concepts, allowing tremendous flexibility and performance for sharing content and visually rich human conversations.
• Production houses can preview animation clips to dispersed teams for live, instant feedback.
• Financial teams spread across the world can run live models for discussion and collaboration.

Using HP SkyRoom is as easy as beginning an instant message conversation. Users simply click a contact to connect, which quickly initiates a live SkyRoom session. Another click shares the desktop or rich media content, and participants are instantly collaborating. During an HP SkyRoom session, information is transferred at a rate four times faster than the blink of an eye.

HP SkyRoom is the culmination of three years of research to design video and image compression algorithms by HP Labs into a customer-centric implementation by the HP Workstation team, which designs professional-quality solutions in collaboration with industry-leading brands around the globe.

The breakthrough innovation behind HP SkyRoom comes from the combination of high-definition, multiuser videoconferencing and a sophisticated capability to share display information more securely than with actual transfer of data and processing functions. HP SkyRoom’s video engine enables all participants to see the presenter’s display and each other through a multiway videoconferencing session. The video engine is multithreaded to take advantage of the power of today’s multiprocessor and multicore processing technologies.

HP SkyRoom’s image engine gives remote users a view of the host presenter’s desktop and its applications as if they were using a local machine. It enables the display of 2-D and 3-D graphics, full-motion video and multidisplay on a system that only has a 2-D graphics card.

The HP SkyRoom software on the presenter’s system monitors and updates only changes in screen appearance – not the entire display – then compresses and encrypts the information before sending it to the participants, where it is decrypted, decompressed and updated. In this way, network traffic is greatly reduced, latency and bandwidth requirements are reduced, and the need for dedicated networking hardware is eliminated.

HP SkyRoom is based on breakthrough video and image communication technology developed in HP Labs, the company’s central research arm. Elements of this technology were used by NASA’s Mars rovers to transfer high-resolution images back to Earth.

The SkyRoom Technology

The innovation behind HP SkyRoom is the combination of high-definition, multi-way video conferencing and a sophisticated capability to share display information rather than actual data and processing. This way, technical limitations on a presenter’s system do not disrupt the entire collaborative environment. The HP-developed Image Engine and Video Engine represent the core technology.

IMAGE ENGINE: The Image Engine gives remote users a view of the host presenter’s desktop and its applications as if they were using a local machine. It enables display of 2-D/3-D graphics, full-motion video and multi-display on a system that only has a 2-D graphics card. In the example in Figure 2, the presenter is executing an MCAD application and sharing the application images with one or more participants.

Internally, the presenter’s computer is executing an application using standard X, OpenGL, DirectX and/ or Graphics Device Interface application program interfaces (APIs). The HP SkyRoom software on the presenter’s system monitors and records any changes in screen appearance, compresses and encrypts that information, and sends it to the participant(s) as required. The participant decrypts and decompresses the information and then updates the local display appropriately. The presenter also sends audio (compressed and encrypted) to the participant(s).

By only sending information that describes changes in the display, network traffic is greatly reduced from sending raw video. Latency and bandwidth requirements are reduced, and the need for dedicated networking hardware is reduced or eliminated.

VIDEO ENGINE: HP SkyRoom also includes the Video Engine—a high performance video conferencing environment. All of the participants can see the presenter’s display and each other through a multi-way video conferencing session. The Video Engine is multi-threaded to take advantage of today’s multi-processor and multi-core processing technologies.

The Video Engine uses an HP-developed video processing technology that is capable of supporting multipoint conferences with an aggregate video resolution that surpasses HD video resolution. With the webcam offered today, resolution is up to 960 x 720 dpi at 15 Frames Per Second (FPS) for a point-to-point conference.

The HP SkyRoom delivers audio using the MPEG compression/decompression (CODEC) algorithm, and video delivery can be MPEG-2 or H.264, as selected by the user. Echo control—often an issue with desktop video chat or conferencing systems—is based on software algorithms within the HP SkyRoom solution.

COMPREHENSIVE FEATURES

The modular architecture of HP SkyRoom, combined with industry-standard components, provides a comprehensive set of features not found in any other collaboration technology in its price range. These features include:

• Easy-to-use, intuitive interface: The HP SkyRoom user interface was developed with HP consumer design methodologies, making it simple and intuitive. Users can get started immediately without the need for special training. And HP SkyRoom integrates with Microsoft® Office Communication Server 2007 or Jabber servers. The integration allows the users to easily share contacts.
• Customizable desktop session sharing: The presenter can easily select and define the area to share, or share the entire desktop. What is shared can be anything on the presenter’s desktop, including documents, videos, 3D models and other rich media.
• High security: HP SkyRoom uses multiple security techniques, including encryption of all media streams and video as well as extensive authorization and authentication. All graphics traffic is encrypted, using the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) with 256-bit keys.
• Full utilization of graphics hardware on the presenter system: HP SkyRoom is not limited to specific hardware solutions; since participants deal only with image data, they need only be capable of displaying 2-D images. This vastly reduces the graphics card, CPU and other system requirements on the participant side and enables high-fidelity, real-time content sharing without high-priced hardware proliferation.
• High quality, high performance compression/decompression technology: HP SkyRoom uses high quality compression/decompression (CODEC) technology to deliver both outstanding image quality and performance. The compression ratio reduces bandwidth requirements and permits communication across standard networking hardware.
• Industry-standard, network-based design: HP SkyRoom uses TCP/IP—the industry standard— with no requirements for proprietary networking, special cables or limited distances. This allows HP SkyRoom to be deployed in an existing network environment. HP SkyRoom can also be extended beyond the firewall boundaries of an organization through VPN connections, allowing collaboration with people in remote locations.

HP SkyRoom will be included as a standard feature – at no cost – on select HP business desktop and mobile workstations and for free for a trial period on many upcoming HP premium business PCs and notebooks. HP SkyRoom can be used on workstations or PCs from Dell, Lenovo or Sun that meet minimum technology requirements. Companies now have the power to change the economics of travel and reduce their carbon footprint while preserving the value of personal human interaction.

To run HP SkyRoom on any vendor PC, minimum requirements are Intel® Core 2™ Duo 2.33-GHz or equivalent processor with 2 GB RAM, a webcam and Microsoft Windows® XP or Vista®. Minimum network requirement is a broadband network with a minimum transfer rate of 400kb/second. HP SkyRoom must run over a corporate VPN to connect to systems outside the local firewall.

HP SkyRoom is available worldwide preinstalled at no cost on the HP Z800, Z600, Z400 and xw4600 workstations. Select premium business PCs and notebooks due out from HP in the coming months will include a 90-day trial of HP SkyRoom, which will be available for purchase thereafter. Customers using current HP workstations, desktops, notebooks or non-HP systems can purchase HP SkyRoom for $149.

More information is available at www.hp.com/go/hpskyroom

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