Static Macroblocks

You certainly dont hear customers bring up the term static macroblocks when you go visit them.

But...you certainly hear about its effects when you visit customers. If that customer is testing TAA & PLCM together, we constantly get comments about the video quality. Typically we'll hear TAA to TAA looks good, PLCM to PLCM looks great, but TAA to PLCM looks terrible.

So, why is that? Well, currently TAA "HD" systems can't do full out HD. They don't have the hardware. It takes 108,000 macroblocks per second to do 30 fps 720HD. All of the current TAA systems are incapable of this amount of processing and therefore only do roughly 30+K. So, at HD resolutions, it means they can only update 30% of the screen at any given second. So, either they need to do less resolution or less frames per seconds. Or... use a controversial feature called static macroblocks. You could roughly say that they freeze parts of the screen that have no movement and thus dont send updates for them. Clever... but unfortunately to work the other endpoint has to support it. You can read here:

http://www.polycom.com/common/documents/whitepapers/hd_video_conferencing_three_leading_contenders_face_off.pdf
http://www.codian.com/support/viewfaqentry.php?id=117&topic=&product=MCU%204200

Unfortunatley TAA doesnt point this out and why would they? it would highlight that their endpoint lineup is completely underpowered.

So, why don't other endpoint companies do it? Well... first off, static macroblocks looks terrible unless everyone is motionless. Sure...that happens in some applications, but not many. And second, if your endpoint has enough horsepower to do real HD 720p at 30fps, why hurt your cusotmers by giving them poor video quality?

I think a common misconception TAA sales people leave cusotmers with is that PLCM is not standards compliant because we don't support Static Macroblocks. Its just not needed. And... its such a short term problem...as its fully expected that TAA will yet again replace their lineup of video endpoints and they'll finally have enough horsepower.