Polycom Add HD To Their Product Arsenal

Oct. 23, 2006 – Polycom, Inc the world’s leading provider of unified collaborative communications solutions, today announced the availability of the Polycom HDX™ 9000 series, a breakthrough platform with the broadest flexibility and highest levels of performance to support any video collaboration application, including high definition (HD). The Polycom HDX solutions deliver an experience like none other with the comprehensive benefits of HD Voice, HD video and HD content sharing, and feature many industry-first capabilities such as simultaneous HD dual streams for People and Content, Siren™22 kHz StereoSurround™ audio and unmatched HD camera performance. The Polycom HDX series provides users with the greatest visual, audio and content detail in a multimedia collaborative meeting. The pure clarity, rich detail and extended fidelity improve productivity and efficiency on a scale never before available in conferences over distance, approaching the same value as face-to-face meetings.

The Polycom HDX solutions are based on the Polycom UltimateHD™ architecture, the foundation for the industry’s only integrated and complete HD video collaboration offering that includes video systems, video multipoint control units (MCU), HD recording, streaming and playback systems (for both video and content), related HD services, and integrated Polycom HD Voice endpoints. The Polycom UltimateHD architecture gives customers the quality, scalability, backwards compatibility and end-to-end integration they require. (For more information on the UltimateHD architecture, please refer to today’s press release entitled, Polycom Announces UltimateHD—Collaboration Architecture for Virtual Meetings that Rival In-Person in Quality of Detail, and Resulting Efficiency & Productivity.)

“The Polycom HDX series delivers far more than a simple increase in video resolution, and significantly enhances the entire user experience – including voice quality, video quality and content sharing capabilities,” said Ed Ellett, senior vice president and general manager of video communications at Polycom. “In many applications, sharing content over distance can be far more valuable than just seeing other people. It is often the exchange of content that allows critical ideas to be transferred, enabling organizations to move swiftly and make confident decisions.”

Polycom is delivering HD video communications technology in solutions for the executive desktop, conference rooms, and vertical solutions for education, healthcare/telemedicine, and judicial environments. In addition, Polycom is working with its alliance partners including Avaya, Microsoft, Alcatel, and IBM to enable the UltimateHD experience in the leading unified communications environments. Today, Polycom is announcing the Polycom HDX 9000 series and the Polycom Practitioner Cart HD for healthcare and medical applications. Polycom HDX video solutions can be integrated in an evolutionary manner as organizational needs demand since they actually improve the performance of existing standards-based video communications systems (non HD) on a network by sending and receiving people and content in higher resolution during a call and leveraging the highest capabilities of those systems.

“The Polycom HDX delivered the best video call I have ever experienced,” said Andrew Davis, managing partner of Wainhouse Research. “The HDX systems provide an exceptional user experience for voice, video and content, and offer a lot of flexibility for customizing its video capabilities for the room and the specific application need. Polycom is also delivering an integrated, end-to-end HD offering, which has all the pieces customers need for a complete HD solution. HD provides video conferencing the way customers always imagined it to be – clear, crisp and seamless.”

Direct Visual is a Polycom Authorised Reseller and an Accredited service provider. If you would like more information on these products or would like a demonstration please do not hesitate to contact us.