The history of video conferencing Part 2
One of the most remarkable systems in the history of video conferencing was the CU-SeeMe developed for the MacIntosh system in 1992. Although the first version didn’t have audio, it was the best video system developed to that point.
By 1993, the Mac program had multipoint capability, and in 1994, CU-SeeMe Mac was true video conferencing with audio. Later, considering the limitations of Mac software in a Windows world, developers worked hard to to roll out the April 1994 CU-SeeME for Windows (no audio), followed closely by the audio version, CU-SeeMe v0.66b1 for Windows in August of 1995.
In 1992, AT&T introduced their own $1,500 video phone. That same year, the world’s first MBone audio/video broadcast took place and in July INRIA’s video conferencing system was introduced. This is the year that saw the first real explosion in video conferencing for businesses around the globe and
eventually led to the standards developed by the ITU.
The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) began developing standards for video conferencing coding in 1996, when they established Standard H.263 to reduce bandwidth for transmission for low bit rate communication. Other standards were developed, including H.323 for packet-based multi-media
ommunications. These are a variety of other telecommunications standards were revised and updated in 1998. In 1999, Standard MPEG-4 was developed by the Moving Picture Experts Group as an ISO standard for multimedia content. In 1993, VocalChat Novell IPX networks introduced their video conferencing system, but it was doomed from the start and didn’t last. Microsoft finally came on board the video conferencing bandwagon with NetMeeting, a descendent of PictureTel’s Liveshare Plus, in August of 1996 (although it didn’t have video in this release). By December of the same year, Microsoft NetMeeting v2.0b2 with video had been released. That same month, VocalTec’s Internet Phone v4.0 for Windows was introduced.