COMPUTERS EQUIPPED WITH VIDEO PHONES
By Adnews Staff
Compaq Computer Corp. will come out with new computers this summer that can be used for video-phone calls over standard telephone lines. Compaq officials were not available yesterday to say what sort of advertising or promotion would be used to support the new video phones. In Canada advertising for Compaq is done by the Toronto office of Ammirati & Puris/Lintas. The new machines will use technology developed by U.S.-based Intel Corp. The increased power of Intel's latest Pentium microprocessors and improved compression software have made video transmission by ordinary phone lines possible. Two years ago Intel introduced the ProShare video-conferencing system. However this requires high capacity ISDN phone lines which are expensive and difficult to obtain. The new system for ordinary phone lines requires a 133 megahertz Pentium processor and a special 28.8 kilobit modem. The images will be slow and jerky because they will be transmitted at a slow four to 12 frames a second. However, Intel's software lets users freeze images and transmit them at higher resolutions, making it possible for families to make digital snapshots of each other while talking on the phone.