Yesterday, Om scooped everyone with his post about SightSpeed and their new placeshifting of video. Beyond Om's post and mine, there was a real flurry of conversation about this new information. The Next Generation of SightSpeed from Andy Abramson pointed to Om's article and set several of us in motion looking for more details. Sightspeed Goes TV from Alec Saunders showed the kind of interest we expect from Alec. He watches everything like a hawk. Bruce Stewart reinforced the broad support we all share for SightSpeed in  SightSpeed Comes Out Slinging over at O'Reilly Emerging Telephony. Aswath gave his usual thougthful comments and comparisons in Place Shifting by IP Communications Clients. Aswatch went so far as to point out a great whitepaper from the SightSpeed team on their video codec technology, which is proprietary. He also points out the value of SightSpeed using a SIP URI to identify the “server”, And he raises, what to many of us is a question, the issue of a proprietary codec rather than something like Ogg. I, for one, like the video quality well enough that I'm less concrend abotu the codec, particularly when it can been all wrapped in SIP.
*** PLEASE SEE NOTE AT THE END

This morning, I spent about an hour on SightSpeed talking with Peter Csathy, their CEO. Peter was gracious enough to share not only his time, but some thoughts on direction, and some slides which he asked me to keep in confidence for now. But he's given me some thoughts and information that I can share with you about SightSpeeds version 5 release coming later in July. Keep in mind that I'm doing my best to share information you need with my commitment to Peter to not share things he'd like kept confidential for the time being. Since my personal bent is heavily slanted toward enterprise business, I do bring a slightly different viewpoint, which I'll share at the end of this post.

Placeshifting video, as we all buzzed about yesterday, is pretty hot stuff. But it's just one aspect of what's in store with SightSpeed. As hot as it might be to you, from my viewpoint, that fantastic new capabilty is just one of a larger set of enhancements. As hot as it it, for me personally, it's almost an "oh by the way, here's SightSpeed TV too" bonus.

SightSpeed is first and foremost about delivering premium quality personal video services. Sure it's a VoIP client, but their strongest developers and leaders brought over ten years of video expertise and development experience from time spent at Cornell working on video. Video is their core, but they do a lot of other things, including voice and IM. SightSpeed has a small staff of incredibly talented people. I'm looking forward to a side trip to Berkeley when I head to the VoIP Developer's Conference in August, just so I can meet them in person. And I'd expect we'll share a podcast or vidcast of that visit in some fashion.

SightSpeed provides for personal video in three key ways - Video Content, Video Creation, and Video Delivery. They've always been focused on consumers - individuals - connecting people. Placeshifting video strengthens that focus on their core audience, but as Peter and I talked, we al;so shared a vision realized.

Many years ago, Alvin Toffler described a future of the electronic cottage. The cottage industry we see finally blossoming today. More and more people work from home or remotely. More and more people are self-employed entrepreneurs who don't invest their life in a corporate entity, but work on projects for many companies and partners. Humans are very social creatures and SightSpeed enhances the social experience of these cottage innovators. As I sat in my home office, and Peter sat in his, we were able to share personal interaction at a human level thatis truly unmatched by telephone conversation.  And in my experience, unmatched by every other video collaboration tool I've used. SightSpeed enhances personal relationships in the digital universe. It's that simple. And never forget that business is personal. Everything we do is tied to our relationships with people.

For SightSpeed users, we've seen PSTN outcalling in beta mode. Version 5.0 will remove the beta and move that feature into full production. We'll see PSTN inbound calling capability added.

We'll see click to call functionality allowing SightSpeed links on web pages and in email signattures. While Peter and I didn't talk about it, I envision the SightSpeed click-to-call call center for customer support. Imagine the power in commerce of clicking help on a web page, and kicking off a video call to a customer service rep who actually can and will help you! I'm all for the end of the FAQ as we evolve to this technology. I seem to only haev infrequently asked questions, and the idea of a real Web 2.0 call center is something I know many businesses can employ.

I'ev talked to Peter in the past about supporting longer video recording times for blog posts and such. We'll see an increase there with the new release.

We'll see technical changes that make the user interface even snappier. Better connectivity, even with the PSTN, and some usability features that will rival the premier services found anywhere in the telecom industry.

And SightSpeed TV.  For more on that, read Om's post.

Parity of User Experience Between the Mac and PC
SightSpeed has both Mac and PC versions. Where they differ from some of the other solutions is that they truly focus on giving the same quality, the same features, the same user experience to both sets of users. Version 5.0 will enhance that. Many players in this space seem to hit PC users and then add Mac features as an afterthought. I'm not a Mac user myself, but many of the people I talk to online are. This common framework or foundation of SightSpeed as our communications tool has proven very valuable.

Other Market Segments Ripe for SightSpeed
Peter and I talk frequently about how other segments of business, education and community might use SightSpeed. I have a cousin who has been a missionary ni Thailand, but currently teaches at Fuller Seminary in Chicago. He's returning to Thailand next year but will continue teaching distance learning courses at the seminary. Distance learning could lead SightSpeed to some new innovations that support the classroom environment. That's just one example.

We also talked about how SightSpeed migth partner with some of the other nimble, entrepeneurial companies in the inified convergence space. I'm confident that SightSpeed and Peter are aiming high in the efforts. They're bringing us a superior solution that they're committed to.

How SightSpeed Will Win the Enterprise
Here's an interesting, and perhaps touchy area for some. I've got mixed feelings about Skype as a secuurity concern in business. That historical Kazaa peer-to-peer foundation still raises the hackles of many enterprise security managers. But I also know how Skype penetrated business in the real world. People use solutions that work. Skype worked at home for many people. They brought in into the enterprise to assist them in doing their job. SightSpeed will penetrate the enterprise in that same stealth mode. And while SightSpeed has some peer-to-peer capabilities, support for SIP and their commitment with supporting broad inteoperability through establsihed standards gives them a leg up on Skype. Given Skype's deeper penetration outside the US, SightSpeed may be poised to penetrate straight into the leadership role here in the US. I can envision them toppling Skype out of a lot of business environments here.

And There's More
You know I'm pretty keen on SightSpeed. I've made no effort to hide that. As I said recently, it kicks the patns off any other similar solution I've ever used. I've used a lot. dating back to point-to-point PictureTel solutions over multiple bonded ISDN lines in the mid 90s. It's fair to say I'm not new to video technologies.

Peter not only shared what's ahead in version 5.0. We talked a bit about further down the road...version 6. Let's just say he's very attuned to mobility and handheld needs in the future. And they're very focused on community. Not technology. Communities of people banding together to collaborate around shared interests.

If you haven't compared or tried SightSpeed yourself, you can do so for free. In my experience, and based on some of the comparisons, certainly in the area of video collaboration, they beat Skype, MSN, AOL, Yahoo and Yahoo. Probably iChat too from what I can read, but I've never used iChat. They are worth your time to check out and see how you can use the value they add to your video needs.

*** NOTE - I got a note from Aron Rosenberg at
SightSpeed that he corrected Aswath's observations based on the white paper, which is outdated. I've copied Aron's comment here for clarity.

Since the cat is out of the bag ... the whitepaper that you reference is a bit out of date. Our current video technology is standards complient H.263 with our "psycho-visual" model built on top of the H.263 system. This codec still operates at 30 fps with 320x240 video. However we can now achieve that fps and size at 256kbps instead of 440kbps. For lower bitrates we use a smaller resolution. The delay is still 15ms or less depending on the speed of your system.

Aron Rosenberg

SightSpeed CTO