Video conferencing is interactive two-way visual and audio communication over a distance. It is often referred to as "videoconferencing" or "video teleconferencing", both of which mean the same thing. It is one of many technologies within the domain of "video communications" including broadcast television, video streaming, video assessment and video collaboration. Today, video conferencing is widely available throughout the United States and Europe with more limited availability throughout Asia and Latin America.

History
Video conferencing first became commercially available in the 1970's as a unique form of communicating over great distances. However, prior to the mid-1980's the high cost of equipment, network lines and its comparably poor quality kept it out of mainstream business use. Then, in the early 1990's, digital communication service offerings such as ISDN and Switched Digital Service began sweeping across both Europe and the United States. This laid the foundational network capability that has enabled widespread use of video technologies including video conferencing.

Deployment of network technologies has been, and remains, key to widespread commercial adoption of video communications. Today, video conferencing equipment, software and services are widely available at prices that even small organizations can afford. Additionally, video communications transport networks can now take many forms - from plain old telephone service (POTS), to Integrated Services Digital Networks (ISDN) and even to Internet Protocol (IP) networks, common in most office environments.

Video Conferencing Systems
Video conferencing systems vary widely, however, features of most all systems are expanding rapidly and the interoperation among products from leading manufacturers is excellent. For example, most video conferencing systems support two monitors and two cameras, one each for people and documents. While features are becoming plentiful, most modern video conference systems can be operated with a simple remote control - similar to those used to operate a consumer television.

Although today there are a number of superb video conferencing products (Sony, Tandberg and Polycom) on the market, each supporting a wide array of features, choosing the best product can be quite difficult. Technical considerations include choosing a network type, selecting equipment capabilities, finding a quality vendor and consideration of the video conference meeting room environment.

Services
TKO provides equipment, services and technical support for local, national and global video conference networks. We distinguish ourselves from all vendors in the video communications industry by providing high quality video products and solutions with unparalleled attention to our customer's objectives.

TKO Video Communications
TKO also provides conferencing software and equipment (Tandberg, Polycom, Radvision, Cisco Systems and Initia AccessSwitch), satellite broadcasting, audio conferencing, audio and streaming video. In addition we offer telecommunications and video conference training.

Meetings | Tandberg 550 | 880 | 1000 | 7000 | MCU | Monitors
Sony PCS-11 | TLl50 | PCS-1 | G70 | Conference Tables | Cart