Menori

Hewlett Packard actually. They now have a wonderful service offering called Halo which is quite frankly jaw droppingly good. “What is it?” you scream “And what’s it got to do with the Covenant?” Err… well nothing. It’s the best piece of Video Conferencing kit I’ve ever seen.

Fundamentally the concept it to recreate an actual meeting room. The “room” (you basically get everything from HP, table, cameras, plasma screens, sound proofing, furniture) is about 17 by 21 feet in size. It has an arc shaped table in it that about 6 people could sit at comfortably. Opposite you it a wall which houses four plasma screens. Three are arranged next to each other and one sits above. What you see on the plasma is the ‘other side’ of the table. But this is actually another pretty much identical meeting room somewhere else in the world. It gives the illusion that you’re sat at a elipsical table. The video quality is astounding and sound is completely synchronised and there is no latency. It’s tremendous. You get a real feeling of a proper in person meeting. Body language etc. all in place. The one thing you don’t quite get is actual eye contact but it’s not far off. I think when Apple produce the screen/camera that they’ve got a patent on then you will be able to get proper ‘look me in the eye and say that’ kind of virtual meetings.

It’s not cheap though, as you can imagine. I’m sworn to NDA. But I’m sure if you rang them up they’d tell you. Dreamworks apparently use them to great effect in their movies production, and Pepsico have a good few of them. Very nice.