Hewlett-Packard’s studio-based halo videoconference line has been extended, with a new desktop which runs a special software using Scalable Video Coding (SVC), which is translated into a intelligence system enabling to adapt the quality of the videoconferencing to the parameters of the network connection (see here for product details).

Hewlett Packard’s drive for videoconferences is also sustained in the market by Apple, which released a special feature in iPhone 4 which enables real-time video chat. The difference between the two players is that HP is shifting the interest towards bigger displays. Commenting the market share that HP has in this field Roopam Jain, a Frost&Sullivan analyst, says that “HP is very well positioned due to its services capabilities, bigger enterprise communications and mobility focus and … its strong unified communications partnership with Microsoft.”

Therefore, HP is able to offer a high-end solution for businesses which are looking at managing conferences engaging up to 100 users in a single video call. The screen can also display 8 people at a time. The average costs announced by HP for the necessary hardware are about $100 per endpoint, while the connection to the software is $5 per endpoint. Moreover, HP published some informative costs regarding the complete acquisition of the system for a company would be $86,000, meaning 100 users  running Vidyo SVC on the same number of desktops or laptops.

The technology that HP brought from Vidyo, in the first quarter of 2010, is capable of scaling the bandwidth and to customize it so that the videoconferencing experience to be impeccable. Also, the freezing of the image is removed. Analysts spotted the fact that only HP is using Vidyo’s solution, while Polycom, LifeSize or Cisco go with other technologies.

Cisco is Halo studio systems’ fierceful competitor, but it has lost space on the market for not being proactive in terms of used technologies. There are many expectations from Cisco, which promised at the begining of this week two desktop thin client devices for videoconferencing use. The announced devices are designed to improve de vizualisation and to offer a better price solution per endpoint.