Trevose-based WorldGate Communications made its name in interactive
television, but the viewing screen on the company's front burner these
days is a bit smaller. WorldGate is rolling out the Ojo. The phone's
fidelity and lack of jitter problems and have gotten the attention of
such companies as Motorola Broadband, which recently placed a $5 million
order with WorldGate. Company CEO Hal Krisbergh recently talked about
the phone of the future.
How did WorldGate get started?
I spent 11 years as president of the broadband division for General
Instrument. After that, I left General Instrument to form WorldGate with
the intention of developing products and services for the cable
industry. Both ITV and Ojo are the results of that move.
It sounds like the Ojo video phone is going to be a big product for
you. Why do you feel it stands out among video phones?
Since the first video phone was introduced by AT&T at the 1964
World's Fair, attempts at video telephony have failed due to poor
quality video and uninspired design. WorldGate focused on advanced
technology to make true-to-life, jitter-free video and synchronized
video and audio a reality.
WorldGate's Ojo video phone has an ergonomic design that allows
users to enjoy a face-to-face communication experience. We feel that Ojo
has redefined video telephony.
Does Ojo need to have access to a hotspot or other broadband source
in order to work?
The Ojo video phone works using the high speed data
infrastructure--either cable or DSL. We anticipate that in the future
Ojo will be able to work wirelessly over any broadband device.
Ojo uses the video format H.264 to increase picture quality. Can you
explain what that means?
To transmit, normal video consumes a great deal of bandwidth, which
is limited in availability. In order to get more signals transmitted
over this limited bandwidth, video compression algorithms have been
developed which process the signals more efficiently, allowing more
signals to be sent over the same bandwidth. The H.264 algorithm is a
standard that is just becoming available to the industry; it is the most
efficiently compressed algorithm to date and finally enables quality
video telephony to.
What are your thoughts on the future of interactive television
products?
Although WorldGate has terminated its ITV line of products and is
now focused on video telephony, it seems that ITV is beginning to make
inroads into the market and it will soon become part of peoples'
everyday experience.
What are some of WorldGate's future plans?
A whole new landscape of opportunity is being created as we add the
video component to communications. Just as television brought a new
dimension to entertainment, we anticipate a world of products and
services to emerge from the initial products. These might include:
devices integrated with cellular phones; devices for the hearing
impaired; portable video phones; a whole range of products in the
broadband home like PCs and TVs; or even central information devices.
