I have just been asked to see how easy/hard it would be for our company to start using video conferencing instead of flying guys all around the world.

To be honest I have never done this so am open to suggestions/help!

We have, in the boardroom, a nice 50" plasma TV (which I assume I could use with a webcam?) along with a computer and broadband/network points.

Suggestions/thoughts?

I would look at have a contractor install and maintain it.

The initial outlay might be a bit steeper but I imagine the TCO would be lower

Try these http://www.penninetelecom.com/ - I know the MD.

A normal webcam would look cr@p on a TV that large so you may have to go for some specialist solution.

The HD polycoms my work use are pretty good, but I have no idea how much they cost. The Halo we have is also amazing but at £20k/month shockingly expensive.

I am currently looking at oovoo.com as a way of doing it.

We looked at ivisit, but it had problems getting through the firewall...

GoToMeeting is very good, but doesn't give video - that said, sharing your desktop and showing a presentation or showing data, demoing software etc. is possibly more useful. oovoo should also do something similar.

GTM is around $40 a month, oovoo is $8 per user (computer) per month, for a 3-way conference, going up to 8 or 12 way, I think. We have 3 sites we need to link and I have a budget of zero, so it is "challenging", working out a good solution.

Skype is great for 1-1, but can't cope with more than one video connection, going to 3 or more participants is audio only.

GTM goes all the way up to thousands of participants, oovoo is more limited, but for a limited number of attendees, it seems to be a good solution - don't let the personal chat look of the initial website put you off. The free version of oovoo includes advertising, which can be annoying, but the paid versions are ad free.

I specced out a nice little setup with 3 computers, 3 projectors, 3 web cams, 3 conference microphones (with built in noise cancellation and speakers, essentially a USB / Bluetooth version of a normal telephone conference device). But it got dropped down to the cheapest pair of loud speakers I could find and the webcams... Even the 3 Pentium D computers I tried to spec (I wanted C2D, but knew they would be too expensive) were thrown out, I have to reuse Athlon XP 1.2Ghz machines!

Did you come up with a solution? We've been asked several times for similar packages. We do SIP hard and soft phones that support 2 way video, but we don't have anything for a multi-way conference yet.

I've seen various options and I've considered coding my own web based solution on our server which has a 100Meg internet connection, but I don't want to waste time reinventing the wheel and I value your opinion.

We are going with Skype for 1-1 and oovoo for multi-way - although some users prefer Gotomeeting for sharing desktops (why do I need to see the person I'm talking to, I just need to show them how to do something).

oovoo works very nicely, but you have to pay for the 3- or more way video service, the free accounts are piled up with adverts. So we went with a paid version for the conference room and the management who want 1-1 meetings get a corporate Skype account (free account, you can create all the accounts you want and manage them centrally).

Thanks. I'll have another look at oovoo. MeBeam and TokBox are others I'm looking at, but an in-house solution is still a possibility. If it ever happens I'll let y'all trial it

Apparently this is worth looking at as well. http://www.mvision.co.uk/