nigel@CC.IC.AC.UK (Mad Nige) (01/06/89)
In the December issue of Gentlemen's Quarterly, (the US edition) there is and ad from Panasonic for a few of their pieces of gear. The one that struck me as most interesting was the Video Phone, which according to the blurb transmits a still picture every 6.5 seconds. To the best of my knowledge, things like that are not available here in the UK. Can anyone give an outline of how it works? Nigel Whitfield.
geek@mit-amt.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Chris Schmandt) (01/09/89)
In article <telecom-v09i0006m04@vector.UUCP> nigel@CC.IC.AC.UK (Mad Nige) writes: >In the December issue of Gentlemen's Quarterly, (the US edition) there >is and ad from Panasonic for a few of their pieces of gear. The one >that struck me as most interesting was the Video Phone, which according >to the blurb transmits a still picture every 6.5 seconds. They are pretty simple. You need to buy a unit for each end, of course. Each consists of monochrome camera and monitor, plus a moderately low resolution frame store. Press a button, your frame is grabbed, and sent by modem to the other end, relatively low speed. Of course, you lose audio while you're your doing it, as the data transfer is in band. If I recall, it's about 4 bits per pixel, so you can see how a bit of encoding can get the image to the other end in that time. I believe that the various similar products use the same protocol so that you can exchange pix between them.