Savvy Buyer -- Video's New Verve

Network appliances for streaming video promise to ease the chore of delivering distance learning.



Some trainers think distance learning without video is a little like a bank without a vault. But those same trainers also complain that the poor quality of video over the Internet ruins the learning experience , much like spending two hours in line waiting to cash a check. Expensive and technically complex videoconferencing systems that are tied to the limitations of ISDN lines are not an ideal solution either.



But rather than give up on video, many distance learning developers are finding solace , and success , in a new breed of hardware called streaming video network appliances. These contraptions deliver high-quality MPEG video streams at a decent price and present a compelling new alternative for the delivery of video-based distance learning.



Network video appliances are black boxes that look like stereo system components. Inside, electronic circuitry encodes and/or decodes analog video from a regular video camera. The signal is then instantly converted into a digital MPEG stream.



The boxes come in a variety of permutations. Users can choose the cheaper VHS-type quality of MPEG-1 or the more expensive DVD-type quality of MPEG-2. For most training, especially talking-head distance learning, MPEG-2 will be overkill and not worth the price. On the other hand, highly visual training applications, such as telemedicine, might demand MPEG-2. Users will also have to choose between encoder-only, decoder-only, or both encode and decode as well as asynchronous transfer mode (ATM)-only, Internet protocol (IP)-only, or both ATM and IP. Generally, the more options and flexibility, the higher the cost.



For companies and schools that have already invested in broadband IP or ATM networks, these boxes will allow any connected network PC to access live video. Most of today's Pentium-class PCs are powerful enough to decode and play MPEG-1 streams, so you may not even need to buy a decoder appliance. If you want the higher visual quality of MPEG-2, however, you'll probably need to either pair up encoder and decoder appliances at each transmission site or buy an appliance that offers both functions. Or if you want to stream video to a place that doesn't have PCs , a classroom, for example , you might buy an MPEG-1 decoder appliance to convert your MPEG stream into an analog signal that can be displayed on an ordinary television set.



Network appliances also allow users to take advantage of a new network capability called multicasting. Unlike traditional unicasting or broadcasting, which can flood networks with hundreds of individual streams, multicasting allows a single video stream to be delivered to any number of desktop PCs. With a little tweaking, most of today's installed networks are multicast-capable. Multicasting is great for distributed training applications because there is no need for a complicated and expensive video server , all you need is a network video appliance in a classroom. Decoding can be done at each PC.



Everybody will want it

At Fulton-Montgomery Community College (FMCC), in Johnstown, o.Y., network video appliances from Wallingford, Conn.-based VBrick Systems enable several e-learning initiatives. The appliances are attached to the campus-wide 100BaseT Ethernet network. Like many colleges, FMCC has invested in networks that have enough bandwidth to stream digital video without adversely affecting routine traffic.



Only nine classrooms at FMCC are currently set up for live distance learning, but any of the school's 89 classrooms can be quickly adapted with one of these highly portable VBrick appliances. FMCC's virtual classes are also being recorded so that students can view classes on their dorm-room PCs using an Internet browser. Both students and instructors can access additional video streams from VCRs, DVD players and satellite receivers that are centrally housed in the college library. Efforts are also underway to tie in the campus TV production studio so student-produced programs can be broadcast across campus.



According to Kevin Ross, assistant dean of institutional technology at FMCC, two $4,000 VBricks have replaced the college's former distance learning system, a dinosaur-like $140,000 room-based videoconferencing system.



"Our old distance learning system had severe limitations when it came to usefulness," says Ross. "Because of its complexity and unreliability, it has only been used successfully twice at a cost of nearly $46,000 per class." Ross says that VBricks have also saved the college money by allowing it to switch to cheaper lower-bandwidth digital lines.



In the past, the school spent $46,000 per year to lease high-bandwidth DS3 lines. Now, with VBricks, the school gets the same video quality over T1 lines that cost only $9,000 per year. He estimates that, overall, the new VBrick system is saving the school 50 percent to 75 percent on annual networking expenditures.



A more traditional distance learning application using network video appliances is the Cascade Consortium project in Chelan, Wash. Appliances from Palo Alto, Calif.-based Optivision link five remote rural schools to create classroom-style distance learning sessions. They can offer specialized courses they couldn't economically justify in the past, including Latin, robotics and advanced calculus.



One of the things Cascade Consortium director Daniel Matthews likes best about network appliances is their ease of use. He says they are so simple to set up that when it's time to prepare for a distance learning session, the high school students can handle the task. FMCC's Ross is equally impressed by the ease and simplicity of network streaming video appliances. "If people can get distance learning this easy, everybody will want to do it," he says.



Optic options

Interactivity is a little more difficult. For example, if you want your learners to be able to ask questions via video, you will need two-way connections that require an encoder and camera at each desktop. This can get costly, but it's probably not as costly as using an ISDN-based videoconferencing system. And you'd avoid the enormous technical complications involved in multi-point ISDN videoconferencing.



The biggest difference between network appliances and videoconferencing systems is video quality, with MPEG clearly outperforming the H.263 compression technology used by most videoconferencing systems. "If all you're doing is connecting talking heads to talking heads, then videoconferencing systems will do the job," says Rich Falcone, Optivision's vice president of worldwide sales and business development. "But if you're trying to teach anything even slightly visual, you'll need the TV-quality of MPEG."



Frick Strecker, vice president of strategy and business development for FVC.com in Santa Clara, Calif., believes that even talking heads require MPEG quality when you're using them to teach. "You don't want people focusing on the video quality; that distracts from the message," he says.



Falcone says that the big videoconferencing vendors (Polycom, PictureTel and Tandberg) have begun to enviously eye MPEG?appliance-based products. And he believes we'll eventually see a convergence that will make network streaming appliance systems and videoconferencing systems virtually indistinguishable. But for now, says Falcone, network appliances have cost, flexibility, quality and ease-of-use advantages.



The appliance boxes produced by Vbrick, Optivision, Minerva and Innovacom are examples of the most widely used network appliances. Several other companies, including FVC.com and Optibase, offer products that are not as appliance-like (simple, self-contained, plug and play) but deliver the same basic solution.



FVC.com's VAN II, for example, is closer to a PC than an appliance. It is box-like and fits into a standard electronic equipment rack. But it has a microprocessor, memory chips, and PC-like slots for encoder and decoder cards, and it runs on Windows NT. Too complex to deserve the "appliance" tag, products like this are probably better termed "video streaming codec systems."



Compared with these systems, a true appliance is more compact and runs under its own built-in real-time operating system. You just plug it into the network, ask your network administrator to assign it an IP address and you're in business. A streaming codec system, on the other hand, requires more setup time and someone who understands the intricacies of Windows NT.



Codec systems are also more expensive. For example, the VBrick sells for $3,995, while the VAN II-style codec system costs $33,500 , and that's with only one encoder and one decoder card. The upside is that upgrading or expanding is a matter of inserting more card-style encoders and decoders. If you added four encoders to a VAN II, you could provide students with video from a live camera, a VCR, a DVD player, a server's hard drive and a satellite feed, simultaneously. If you added four encoder cards and four decoder cards to an Optibase MGW-2000, you would have a system that allows five-way multi-site connections.



This is not cheap, though. The base price for an Optibase MGW-2000, is $15,995. Each additional channel costs another $9,000. That means a five-channel system would cost well over $50,000.



Pricing aside, the power and flexibility of such products can form the basis of some pretty sophisticated learning systems. FVC.com's technology has been used, for example, to create a distance learning network for the University of Maine in Bangor and to create Britain's Sussex Virtual College. The Army National Guard, with one of the world's largest broadband networks, is using FVC.com equipment to video-enable more than 700 classrooms, bringing two-way, video-based training to more than 375,000 soldiers.



Many vendors of the simpler appliances also offer more sophisticated codec systems. For example, along with its lower-end true appliance, the NAC-3000, Optivision also sells the VS-Pro multichannel video codec system. Yet Optivision's Falcone freely admits the company sells far more NACs than Pros. That's because "true appliances are more convenient and reliable," he says.



However, many educators and trainers may not be willing to forego the benefits of video servers. Appliances are fine as long as you're doing classroom-style distance learning where all interaction is synchronous. But if you want learners to be able to access stored video clips on demand, you'll need the kind of technology that is only provided by more sophisticated servers. Of course, network video appliances function well with almost any server, but they also lose a bit of their biggest advantage , cost savings.



-Mark Fritz (markfritz@intergrafix.net) is an instructional design consultant and freelance writer in Bloomsburg, Pa.



SIDEBAR:

Key Appliance Advantages

o Don't need a separate video capture and encoder card.

o Don't need a network video server.

o Don't need ISDN lines or modems.

o Can display video on regular TV sets with decoder.

o Image quality can be assured and adjusted.

o Highly portable.

o Uses MPEG, a true industry standard.

o Easy video feed switching and centralized stream management.



PRODUCT COMPARISON:

Network video appliances



VBRICK SYSTEMS INC.

203-265-0044

www.vbrick.com



Product: VBrick 1000 Series

Description: Network video appliance encoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-1

Primary Interface: Ethernet/IP or ATM

Price: $3,995 (IP)



Product: VBrick 2000 Series

Description: Network video appliance decoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-1

Primary Interface: Ethernet/IP or ATM

Price: $3,995 (IP)



Product: VBrick 3000 Series

Description: Network video appliance encoder/decoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-1

Primary Interface: Ethernet/IP or ATM

Price: $4,995



Product: VBrick 4/5/6000 Series

Description: Network video appliance encoder/decoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-2

Primary Interface: Ethernet/IP or ATM

Price: starts at $7,495



*****



OPTIVISION INC.

650-855-0200

www.optivision.com



Product: NAC 3000 Series

Description: Network video appliance encoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-1 or MPEG-2

Primary Interface: Ethernet/IP

Price: starts at $6,995



Product: NAC 4000 Series

Description: Network video appliance decoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-1 or MPEG-

Primary Interface: 2 Ethernet/IP

Price: $2,995



Product: VS-PRO Series

Description: Streaming codec system encoder/decoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-1 or MPEG-2

Primary Interface: Ethernet/IP or ATM

Price: starts at $16,280



*****



INNOVACOM INC.

408-727-2447

www.transpeg.com



Product: MediaWEB NES

Description: Network video appliance encoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-1

Primary Interface: Ethernet/IP

Price: $5,000 - $10,000



Product: TransPEG NET

Description: Network video appliance encoder/decoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-1 or MPEG-2

Primary Interface: Ethernet/IP or ATM

Price: $14,000 - $21,000



Product: TransPEG DLT

Description: Streaming codec system encoder/decoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-1 or MPEG-2

Primary Interface: Ethernet/IP or ATM

Price: $20,000 - $35,000



*****



MINERVA NETWORKS INC.

408-567-9400

www.minervanetworks.com



Product: Minerva 40

Description: Network video appliance encoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-4/QuickTime

Primary Interface: Ethernet/IP

Price: $4,950



Product: Minerva 100 Series

Description: Network video appliance encoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-1

Primary Interface: Ethernet/IP

Price: $6,950 - $12,950



Product: Minerva 151

Description: Network video appliance encoder/decoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-1 or MPEG2

Primary Interface: Ethernet/IP

Price: $14,950



Product: Minerva 200

Description: Network video appliance encoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-1 or MPEG-2

Primary Interface: Ethernet/IP

Price: $19,950



Product: Minerva 201

Description: Network video appliance encoder/decoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-1 or MPEG-2

Primary Interface: Ethernet/IP

Price: $22,950



*****



OPTIBASE INC.

408-260-6760

www.optibase.com



Product: MGW 2000

Description: Streaming codec system encoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-1 or MPEG-2

Primary Interface: Ethernet/IP

Price: $15,995 single channel; $8,995 additional channels



*****



FVC.com

408-567-7200

www.fvc.com



Product: VAN II

Description: Streaming codec system encoder/decoder

Primary Compression: MPEG-2

Primary Interface: ATM

Price: starts at $33,900



*****



COPYRIGHT Bill Communications Inc. 2001. All rights reserved.