Berkeley, California-based SightSpeed offers high-quality videoconferencing for the masses. No expensive hardware, no ISDN connection – SightSpeed’s software lets desktop users with a Web camera make smooth real-time video calls and video messages. Because the software establishes peer-to-peer connections between callers, services can be offered at low cost or even free.

SightSpeed has long been a favorite of scattered families, road-warrior salesmen calling home at night and members of the deaf community holding sign-language conversations. About 30 percent of users are small-business people, such as language tutors and music teachers, who use the Internet to provide services that would normally require face-to-face meetings.

Now, in the recently released version 5.0 of its software, SightSpeed is expanding its scope to cover the market for what it calls “personal video services.”

TV on the PC

One new feature is Sightspeed TV, currently in beta testing, - TV place-shifting software that lets subscribers watch their televisions remotely, from computers anywhere in the world. The television must be connected to a Media Center PC or a PC with a TV capture card. The remote PC needs only the SightSpeedTV software and no additional hardware. The hypothetical road warrior, after placing a video call to his wife at the end of a hard day on the road, can then call the TV capture card on his home PC and settle down to watch his local sports team in action.

Online communication is still at the center of SightSpeed’s offerings, and most of the software’s new features enable communication. Some of these include:

- Voice-only online calling to other PCs, as well as full PSTN in and out calling, which enables customers to call or receive calls from landlines and cell phones.

- Enhanced video blogging with extended recording time.

- Click-to-call buttons that can be placed in blogs, Web sites and e-mails.

Getting in Sync

Version 5.0 also boosts SightSpeed’s core video-calling capabilities with a new video codec that helps ensure perfectly synchronized video and sound. “The beautiful thing about this new codec is that we’re able to have a very good quality experience across a much broader swath of network conditions,” says SightSpeed’s CEO, Peter Csathy. “Even at 128Kbps, it’s a decent experience.”

While SightSpeed delivers a “decent” experience at 128Kbps, it becomes really impressive at 300Kbps, as this reporter can attest after using the system to interview the sources for this article. And more bandwidth makes it even better. “You can dial it up to whatever the bandwidth permits,” explains Aron Rosenberg, founder and CTO of SightSpeed.

But even with high download speeds, two barriers often stand in the way of realizing SightSpeed’s potential. The first is upload speed. “In most places, people’s upload speeds are smaller than their download,” says Rosenberg. “Real-time video is one of the first applications that’s really pushing your upload speeds. Generally the quality that you see [in a video call] is much more impacted by the other person’s upload than by your download.”

The second limitation is the poor quality of most webcams. “Where we start seeing the really superb quality is when we can start using cameras that capture higher resolutions than today’s webcams work at,” says Rosenberg. “It’s a natural evolution. Our technology and systems are just waiting for that moment.”

To accommodate disparate bandwidths and navigate the Internet’s sometimes unsteady seas, SightSpeed uses technology that is based on years of research conducted at Cornell University’s DISCOVER Lab. Its software compresses and transmits only the visual information that the human eye requires -- significantly reducing the data transmitted and the communication delay.

As Csathy explains, “We’re able to monitor bandwidth connections during the call. Taking into account the variability of the Internet, we’re able to adjust so that the most important bits are received and optimized. We’re able to select that which matters to the human brain.”
 

Ready for Prime Time

Many of SightSpeed’s basic features, including making voice and video calls, recording videos, and watching TV from the computer, are available free of charge.

The Pro Service plan, at $4.95 a month, allows unlimited worldwide multiparty calls and expanded online video storage. A free webcam is the reward for signing up for a year’s subscription. PSTN calling is charged per minute, at competitive rates.

When will video calling become the rule rather than the exception? “The biggest hurdle is people just trying it and realizing that this is ready for prime time,” says Csathy. “Once they realize that it is, and it’s easy to use, it’s second nature to use it more.”