HP launches Sky Room

HP'S VIDEOCONFERENCING and collaboration platform SkyRoom is now available for download.

At a launch event at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco, HP's worldwide product marketing manager for personal workstations, Jeff Wood highlighted the technology's real-time desktop sharing and high-definition video streaming features.

"While telepresence is an incredibly immersive experience, it's expensive, the rooms are set in fixed locations and you have to make sure all the required rooms can be booked when needed," he said.

"SkyRoom makes it easy to have a rich videoconferencing experience no matter where you are and without all the hassle."

Unlike many desktop video chat applications, SkyRoom can connect up to four simultaneous users at a time.

According to Wood, the ability to stream rich media content with minimal lag is thanks to an internally developed high-compression codec, elements of which are also used by Nasa's Mars rovers to send images back to Earth.

The system was originally announced and demonstrated in March and has been available in beta since that time.

HP will be pre-installing SkyRoom on new Z800, Z600, Z400 and xw4600 workstations. A few of its upcoming premium business PCs and notebooks will include a 90-day trial of SkyRoom. Those wishing to install SkyRoom themselves can download the application from HP at a cost of $149 (£91.10).

HP is also offering an accessory kit - which includes a Logitech webcam and headphones - for $119 (£72.77).

Although SkyRoom will not be restricted to HP machines, users will need a minimum of Intel Core 2 Duo 2.33GHz or equivalent processor with 2GB of RAM, a 400Kbit/s broadband connection, a webcam and Microsoft Windows XP or Vista. Graphics specifications were not mentioned. µ