Adobe Connect and New GoToMeeting HD

Question

We have been using the Microsoft Live Meeting platform for about 2 years and wanted to move to an HD platform..just heard about the HD GTM on the TWIT MacBreak weekly podcast and did not know if we move to Adobe Connect .. is there an HD comparable option available or is it forthcoming? Leo

Answer 1

This is a very long type of conversation...really.
Things to consider if you want to move to a high definition video format for web conferencing:
1. Bandwidth - do you have the network that can handle all users connecting at 780p resolution which would be about 3-4 times more data than the VGA or 640x480 resolution Adobe Connect uses? Many customers do not have the bandwidth to even handle VGA! The bandwidth requirements are huge when you are talking 1500 people in an Adobe Connect Seminar. That would overwhelm many IP based networks in no time at all.
2. Adobe Connect like most web conference solutions is designed for corporate and government/educational  agencies. Many of those customers do not offer employees HD camera equipment or cameras period. Yes, there are exceptions but in general the product is designed for the average corporate/government customer with limited bandwidth and limited budgets for higher end equipment.
3. Many customers have spent millions of dollars on Polycom and Tandberg HD type systems. These are extremely costly and they run on private networks to avoid the bandwidth issue mentioned. Those networks are costly as well but designed solely for video and audio from the SIP/h.264 or H.323 traffic. Adobe Connect can participate in that system as a "listener/watcher" . For most customers that is fine.
4. Adobe is looking at HD options for Adobe Connect future versions but today the Adobe Connect 8 platform uses the Adobe Flash Media Server/Flash Player 9 feature set which limits the video to VGA quality for the webcam pod . It is planned that Adobe Flash 10 feature set will be added to one of the Adobe Connect 9 releases next year and at that point the options for HD (780p) video will arrive. So, stay tuned for that.
5. Do most people need HD video? It's nice and we all like it but when you have hundreds of people in a room attending a meeting then video could be a huge disruption if some have bandwidth issues or if the entire network gets bogged down.
As for GoToMeeting's option, it is limited to 6 cameras and uses different streams to do that. Adobe Connect prides itself on using one network port (443 - SSL) for all traffic which helps our customers deal with firewall issues. Having many ports is a huge issue for many of our competitors. Understand that GoToMeeting has a market focus on small/medium corporations and individuals and cannnot scale to the numbers that Adobe Connect can.  They are also not focussed on government and do not have Section 508 compliancy that government agencies are required to consider. US State and Local Agencies have to consider accessibility as well when accepting Federal funding.