If seeing is believing, then the videoconferencing experience of the past has always been something less than believable. Despite boastful claims that the video was “just as good as being there” and would allow us to “extend the conference room table 10,000 miles,” the truth was always something short of expectations.

The quality of videoconferencing was limited. Viewed in low resolution, participants always have appeared blurred and murky. While organizations have gone to great lengths to modify rooms and lighting to create the best possible quality, they have done so with limited success and at great expense.

Now, through high definition, the opportunity to make video communications deeply compelling and true-to-life has arrived. This promises to be a consequential leap in technological innovation, but it also represents an important advance in terms of productivity in an era of global collaboration and communication.

Why are advances in video communications technology important? Such innovations matter because the productive value of interactive video is inextricably bound to the technology itself. After all, no one would watch television if it was difficult to turn on and had a low quality picture. Similarly, the reluctance to actively use video communications is linked to poor image resolution, unimpressive sound quality, and user complexity. As interactive video becomes a vivid, high definition experience, it will also become an actively used and highly productive form of communication.

Advances in video communications technology represent immediate savings to the bottom line as travel time and costs are reduced. But video communications and other rich media collaboration solutions also “provide better ways to communicate and work,” according to a report by Wainhouse Research. “New tools provide ways for knowledge workers not just to exchange information, but to interact productively.”

High definition technology provides resolution that offers three times (3X) the resolution of standard television (NTSC) resolution and nearly ten times (10X) the resolution of the conventional videoconferencing systems (FCIF) available over the past 15-20 years. With the introduction of high definition video, powerful new camera designs, spatial audio and new user interface approaches, video communications is poised for dramatic technological advances.

Global and decentralized organizations increasingly will depend on video communications and other rich media collaboration technology to efficiently meet their business and collaborative objectives. However, the productivity of interactive video is inseparable from the quality of the technology. In this case, “realism” and user simplicity enhances the nature of the experience, efficiency and benefits of the communication. High definition video communications technology innovations, therefore, represent an important opportunity to drive productivity and creativity in a global economy.

This article was submitted by LifeSize Communications. www.lifesize.com.