It was a losing formula as proved by the fact that Cisco recently pulled the plug on Umi. What's more, if your family or friends wanted to communicate through Umi, they had to purchase their own Umi gear. And that was on top of a $25 monthly fee. TelyHD couldn't match the outstanding video quality of Cisco's Umi Telepresence video-calling system I reviewed a little over a year ago.īut at $249.99, TelyHD carries a far more inviting price compared with the $599 that Cisco's unit went for at the time. You need a robust Internet connection of at least 1 Mbps (upstream and downstream) to achieve 720p, lest the box downgrade the quality. The box is capable of delivering high-definition video up to the 720p standard, though I certainly never mistook the pictures I saw for a supercrisp HD series on network television. In my tests, TelyHD delivered generally acceptable but uneven video quality, even after I swapped one test unit for another. In other words, it has the guts of a computer, which suggests some interesting possibilities down the road.įor now, though, this is mostly about video calling via Skype.
Inside the nearly a foot-long black box is a wide-angle high-definition camera, four noise-canceling microphones, a pretty powerful dual-core Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, and Android software. With its compact TelyHD Skype-compatible set-top box that recently went on sale, the company believes it can succeed where others have failed. And consider how appealing it might be for the entire family to congregate in front of a camera to show off the newborn to out-of-town relatives, rather than having everyone try to crowd in front of a PC's webcam.Įnter Silicon Valley newcomer Tely Labs. The screen on your TV is likely the largest and best display in your house. Some combination of the two.Įven so, I've always appreciated the idea behind using the TV for video calls. Video calls on the TV have barely registered with consumers. Or that in recent years companies such as Cisco and Logitech have introduced set-top options for turning your living room TV into a gigantic video phone. Never mind that some newer, connected smart TVs provide video-calling options. But such calls remain a rarity on your television. — - Video calling on computers, mobile phones and tablets is no longer the novelty it was even a few years ago.
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