Socio-technical aspects of video phones

The widespread use of voice over Internet protocol has paved the way for video over Internet protocol. In the past, certain technical shortcomings have prevented the popularity of videophones in the market. With present-day technology, videophones have just about everything required for day-to-day functions. Under such circumstances, certain socio-technical aspects require attention so that videophones can become as widespread and as technically streamlined as a plain old telephone system (POTS) with its additional benefits. A frequently brushed-upon topic is optimum features in the video phone for day-to-day social interactions. We carried out several experiments on different kinds of codecs and video formats to address two issues: i) the size of a video screen and ii) perception of motion and distance. From the measurements, we observed that a small frame rate with low bandwidth is adequate and can result in satisfactory video quality. We also observed that H263 performs well for all the day-to-day social networking activities. Standing 4 feet from the camera can still give reasonably good video quality in the currently available codecs. We believe that socio-technical issues will emerge more clearly over the next several years and they are germane to deployment of PC-based soft phones as well as hard phones.