The end users of a videoconferencing system are humans and the system should be designed to help the users to conduct a meeting where the participants are distributed in space. Transfer effects and association play an important role in the users' decision to adopt a new medium, so for a videoconferencing system to succeed it should provide an audio and video quality comparable to that of other services offered in similar environments.
The practical implications of the theories presented in this report is demonstrated in the design and implementation of a room-based videoconferencing system using standard computers interconnected by an IP-based network that offer better than broadcast TV resolution and still maintain a good interactivity. The system is based on consumer grade DV equipment and IEEE 1394 firewire commonly available in modern computers. I also show different ways to deal with multipoint scaling issues and multiprogramming overhead by analyzing the end-system of a room-to-room videoconferencing site.
Tests with the prototype seems to support earlier observations that; even if network bit-rates increases rapidly, the computer design of today has problems to catch up. The designer of systems providing high-bandwidth, networked, real-time, interactive multimedia services like videoconferencing has to be aware of this trend.