VIDEOPHONE:

Videophone, also called video telephone, device that simultaneously transmits and receives both
audio and video signals over telephone lines.
In addition to the two-way speech transmission traditionally associated with the telephone, for many
years there has been an interest in transmitting two-way video signals over telephone circuits in order
to facilitate communication between two parties.
Two-way video communication systems employ a videophone at each end.
The videophone incorporates a personal video camera and display, a microphone and speaker, and a
data-conversion device.
The data-conversion device permits transmission of video over telephone circuits through the use of
two components: a compression/expansion circuit, which reduces the amount of information
contained in the video signal, and a modem, which translates the digital video signal to
the analog telephone line format.
Another form of video transmission over telephone lines is videoconferencing. A videoconferencing
system is quite similar to a videophone, except that the camera and display at each end are intended to
serve a group of people. Frequently, the video camera in such a system may focus on either
individuals or the group, often under control of the local user or under remote control of the distant
party.
The first complete experimental videophone system, known as Picture phone, in 1963. By 1968 Bell
engineers had developed a second-generation Picture phone, which was put into public service in
1971.

Analog Videophones
The second-generation Picture phone was designed as a complete system. All aspects of the system—
such as terminal equipment, local loop transmission, switching, long-distance transmission, and
private branch exchange—were designed and developed to support two-way video communication
over telephone circuits. Picture phone employed analog black-and-white video transmission similar to
that used in television broadcasting. The crucial difference lay in the bandwidth of the video signals.
Conventional television employed a 4.5-megahertz signal, which could transmit the information
required to trace the standard American analog television picture of 525 lines per frame at a rate of 60
frames per second. In order to reduce the video signal to 1 megahertz—a bandwidth that could be
supported by telephone lines—Picture phone employed a picture frame of approximately 250 lines.
The screen was 14 by 12.5 cm (5.5 by 5 inches)—a screen size that was deemed to be appropriate for
video monitors and was compatible with the resolution of the transmitted signal. The Picture phone
terminal consisted of a free-standing microphone and a video display unit containing a speaker, an
electron-tube camera, and a cathode-ray picture tube.

Digital Videophone Systems

In the late 1980s several companies began to develop and sell still-frame videophones that could
operate directly over the public switched telephone network (PSTN). The still-frame videophone
employs a video camera and a frame-capture system to capture a single video frame for transmission.
Since still-frames exhibit no time dependency, they do not have to be transmitted in real time over the
PSTN, permitting the use of standard, commercially available modems to transmit at 2.4 to 9.6
kilobits per second.
In 1992 AT&T introduced the Video Phone 2500, the world’s first colour videophone that could
transmit over analog telephone lines. Unlike the earlier Picture phones, the Video Phone 2500
employed digital compression methods to enable a significant reduction of the bandwidth required for
full-motion video transmission.
A V.34 modem was employed to transmit the compressed video signal over an analog telephone line
for access to the PSTN, where the signal could be readily circuited through central-office switches.
Depending on the quality of the telephone line, the Video Phone 2500 transmitted at either 19.2 or
16.8 kilobits per second. The video compression algorithm employed in the Video Phone 2500 was
licensed to a number of Japanese manufacturers for employment in similar videophones.
Nevertheless, lack of sales led AT&T to discontinue the Video Phone 2500 in 1995. Other
manufacturers in both the United States and Europe, including British Telecommunications and the
Marconi Company, developed similar videophone terminals for operation over the PSTN.
Videotelephony comprises the technologies for the reception and transmission of audio-video signals by
users at different locations, for communication between people in real time.
 A videophone is a telephone with a video display, capable of simultaneous video and audio for
communication between people in real time
Videotelephony also included "image phones" which would exchange still images between units every few
seconds over conventional plain old telephone service (POTS) lines, essentially the same as slow-scan TV.
The development of advanced video codecs, more powerful CPUs, and high-bandwidth Internet
telecommunication services in the late 1990s allowed videophones to provide high quality low-cost colour
service between users almost any place in the world where the Internet is available.
Although not as widely used in everyday communications as audio-only and text communication, useful
applications include sign language transmission for deaf and speech-impaired people, distance
education, telemedicine, and overcoming mobility issues. It is also used in commercial and corporate
settings to facilitate meetings and conferences,
 More popular videotelephony technologies use the Internet rather than the traditional landline phone
network, even accounting for modern digital packetized phone network protocols, and even though
videotelephony software commonly runs on smartphones.
actical digital videotelephony was made possible only with advances in video compression, due to the
impractically high bandwidth requirements of uncompressed video. To achieve Video Graphics
Array (VGA) quality video (480p resolution and 256 colors) with raw uncompressed video, it would
require a bandwidth of over 92 Mbps. The most important compression technique that enabled practical
digital videotelephony and videoconferencing is the discrete cosine transform (DCT). The DCT, a form
of lossy compression, was conceived in 1972 by Nasir Ahmed, who developed the algorithm with T.
Natarajan and K. R. Rao at the University of Texas in 1973. The DCT algorithm became the basis for the
first practical video coding standard that was useful for online videoconferencing, H.261, standardised by
the ITU-T in 1988, and subsequent H.26x video coding standards.

The Kyocera VP-210 Visual Phone was the first commercial mobile videophone (1999).
The core technology used in a video telephony system is digital compression of audio and video streams in real time. The hardware
or software that performs compression is called a codec (coder/decoder). Compression rates of up to 1:500 can be achieved. The
resulting digital stream of 1s and 0s is subdivided into labeled packets, which are then transmitted through a digital network of some
kind (usually ISDN or IP).

The other components required for a videoconferencing system include:

 Video input: (PTZ / 360° / Fisheye) video camera, or webcam

 Video output: computer monitor, television, or projector
 Audio input: microphones, CD/DVD player, cassette player, or any other source of PreAmp audio outlet.
 Audio output: usually loudspeakers associated with the display device or telephone
 Data transfer: analog or digital telephone network, LAN, or Internet
 Computer: a data processing unit that ties together the other components, does the compressing and decompressing, and
initiates and maintains the data linkage via the network.

Bandwidth requirements
Videophones have historically employed a variety of transmission and reception bandwidths, which can be
understood as data transmission speeds. The lower the transmission/reception bandwidth, the lower the
data transfer rate, resulting in a progressively limited and poorer image quality (i.e. lower resolution and/or
frame rate). Data transfer rates and live video image quality are related, but are also subject to other factors
such as data compression techniques. Some early videophones employed very low data transmission rates
with a resulting poor video quality.
Broadband bandwidth is often called "high-speed", because it usually has a high rate of data transmission.
In general, any connection of 256 kbit/s (0.256 Mbit/s) or greater is more concisely considered broadband
Internet. The International Telecommunication Union Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T)
recommendation I.113 has defined broadband as a transmission capacity at 1.5 to 2 Mbit/s. The Federal
Communications Commission (United States) definition of broadband is 25 Mbit/s.[31]
Currently, adequate video for some purposes becomes possible at data rates lower than the ITU-T
broadband definition, with rates of 768 kbit/s and 384 kbit/s used for some video conferencing
applications, and rates as low as 100 kbit/s used for videophones using H.264/MPEG-4 AVC compression
protocols. The newer MPEG-4 video and audio compression format can deliver high-quality video at
2 Mbit/s, which is at the low end of cable modem and ADSL broadband performance

Standards
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) has three umbrellas of standards for
videoconferencing:

 ITU H.320 is known as the standard for public switched telephone networks (PSTN) or

videoconferencing over integrated services digital networks. While still prevalent in
Europe, ISDN was never widely adopted in the United States and Canada
 ITU H.264 Scalable Video Coding (SVC) is a compression standard that enables
videoconferencing systems to achieve highly error resilient Internet Protocol (IP) video transmissions
over the public Internet without quality-of-service enhanced lines. [32] This standard has enabled wide
scale deployment of high definition desktop videoconferencing and made possible new architectures,
[33]
 which reduces latency between the transmitting sources and receivers, resulting in more fluid
 communication without pauses. In addition, an attractive factor for IP videoconferencing is that it is
easier to set up for use along with web conferencing and data collaboration. These combined
technologies enable users to have a richer multimedia environment for live meetings, collaboration
and presentations.
 ITU V.80: videoconferencing is generally compatibilized with H.324 standard point-to-point
video telephony over regular (POTS) phone lines.

Protocols
 Newer videophones often use SIP, which is often easier to set up in home networking
environments.[36] It is a text-based protocol, incorporating many elements of the Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP) and the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP).[37] H.323 is still used, but more
commonly for business videoconferencing, while SIP is more commonly used in personal
consumer videophones. A number of call-setup methods based on instant messaging protocols
such as Skype also now provide video.
 Another protocol used by videophones is H.324, which mixes call setup and video compression.
Videophones that work on regular phone lines typically use H.324, but the bandwidth is limited by
the modem to around 33 kbit/s, limiting the video quality and frame rate. A slightly modified
version of H.324 called 3G-324M defined by 3GPP is also used by some cellphones that allow
video calls, typically for use only in UMTS networks.[38][39]
 There is also H.320 standard, which specified technical requirements for narrow-band visual
telephone systems and terminal equipment, typically for videoconferencing and videophone
services. It applied mostly to dedicated circuit-based switched network (point-to-point)
connections of moderate or high bandwidth, such as through the medium-bandwidth ISDN digital
phone protocol or a fractionated high bandwidth T1 lines. Modern products based on H.320
standard usually support also H.323 standard.[40]
 The IAX2 protocol also supports videophone calls natively, using the protocol's own capabilities
to transport alternate media streams. A few hobbyists obtained the Nortel 1535 Color SIP
Videophone cheaply in 2010 as surplus after Nortel's bankruptcy and deployed the sets on
the Asterisk (PBX) platform. While additional software is required to patch together multiple
video feeds for conference calls or convert between dissimilar video standards, SIP calls between
two identical handsets within the same PBX were relatively straightforward
Other names for videophone that have been used in English are: Viewphone (the British
Telecom equivalent to AT&T's Picturephone),[88] and visiophone,
Block diagram
Videoconferencing
During the late 1990s two new videophone solutions were developed: business videoconferencing and
desktop videoconferencing. Business videoconferencing employs video cameras, video compression
and decompression hardware and software, and interfaces to one or more ISDN lines or
an Internet connection in order to provide capture, transmission, and display of synchronized voice
and video to one or more locations. Typically, these systems are installed in conference rooms to
permit meetings to be held without requiring travel by the participants. Several companies
developed proprietary transmission protocols and voice and data compression techniques, but most
make use of standards developed by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in order to
permit interoperability of different systems.
Desktop videophones usually consist of inexpensive cameras connected to a personal computer (PC),
video-sharing software, and an Internet connection (either dial-up or broadband) between two PCs.
Because of bandwidth limitations, desktop systems are usually of lower quality than business
videoconferencing systems. Some desktop conferencing software includes application-sharing
between two or more PCs, a shared clipboard, file-transfer capability, a “whiteboard” for sharing
ideas, and chat service between users.