As we completed this review, Creative Labs introduced a videoconferencing kit for use over standard phone lines. If you're on a tight budget and want to do whiteboarding and application sharing, with a little low-quality video thrown into the mix, or if you need to videoconference where ISDN isn't available, Creative Labs' $1500 Share Vision 3000 system could be the answer.
It's a two-board solution that includes a Video Blaster RT300 frame grabber card, an NTSC camera, a 28.8-Kbps modem, and a Share Vision card, which handles the serial I/O and audio. The Share Vision software includes modules for videoconferencing, whiteboard capabilities, application sharing, file transfer, and a phone book.
You can adjust the video resolution to any of three resolutions: 96 by 80 pixels, 128 by 96 pixels, or 160 by 120 pixels. Creative Labs claims frame
rates ranging between 5 and 15 frames per second, though the highest figure must apply to the smallest resolution due to the limited 28.8-Kbps bandwidth. A zoom button on the video windows is a useful feature that allows you to make your face fill more of the video window.
A benefit to this system is that the components can serve other functions. You can, for example, use the 28.8-Kbps modem as a regular modem. The Video Blaster RT, a high-power video frame grabber with built-in hardware-assisted compression, includes Video for Windows drivers, so it can be used as a video digitizing board.
Low-End Conferencing
