About a month ago, Sony presented their latest video conferencing killer product, the PCS-HG90, a system with a 1.12Mpix 3CCD HD camera (PCA-CHG90).

IPELA, the Sony HD video conference
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IPELA, the Sony HD video conference
(WMV9HD 720p Torrent “Right click, Save as…”)

HD video conferencing is not new but Sony is the only company to offer an affordable, flexible, and easy to configure product. You just need a decent Internet connection and 2 sets of PCS-HG90 and PCA-CHG90 to use the system.

On the video side, this system is extremely good, and the conference Sony was proposing on a 200” screen (with a SXRD 4K video projector, a top of the line professional product) had an excellent quality for a video in 720/60p at 8Mbps, the maximum this solution can offer.

To reach such quality at 8Mbps, Sony is finally using the H.264 video codec, which renders video quite nicely if used properly.

Since this is a product for professional use, the IPELA HD has no HDMI port but HD-SDI for video and XLP for audio. You don’t have to use the Sony PCA-CHG90 HD camera but any other HD video source of your choice.
If your video conferences include sensitive topics, such as conquering the world (there’s nothing funny about that: Worofu in Austria and me regularly have this kind of conversation to turn the world into a giant pig!), Sony has integrated a data encrypting system with no effect on the quality and the flow of images.

Who is the likely target for this system? With its flexibility and video quality, IPELA HD can be used in many areas. Only its price of 33,000 euros for the full package may turn you out. Nevertheless, Sony is targeting companies in every market, hospitals and other medical services, universities, designers, architects, TV broadcasters… the list goes on.

Pros:
The quality and flow of the images
The ideal item to show off with your friends

Cons:
The price of 33,000 for the whole set

Conclusion:
Even if a product like this is still out of reach of consumers today, we have to admit that such a solution with its quality and flexibility is affordable, especially for companies that need to organize video conferences regularly or need very high image resolution (doctors, architects…).
Sony is even a pioneer in this domain as no other company in Japan is offering this kind of solution, which, I’d like to insist, is quite easy to set up!
If we’re only starting the HD era and Sony already offers simple solutions such as the IPELA, we can only hope that one day, we’ll see an IPELA equivalent in our BRAVIA TV or PS3 or PS4…