An experimental integrated workstation for teleconferencing

This paper gives a brief description of an integrated workstaton based on the IBM PC for use as a videoconferencing terminal for communication over an integrated services digital network using asynchronous transfer mode. The MASTER (Multimedia AidS for TeleconfERencing) project, funded largely by the Science and Engineering Research Council, was set up to investigate a low-cost teleconferencing environment suitable for operation across an ISDN. When this project was first conceived telephone-based teleconferencing systems was already in use, but were still quite expensive to install. It was felt that technological advances were making possible the reception, and play-back, of pictures and sound on ordinary desk-top computers, which would provide the basis for low-cost teleconferencing systems. Towards the end of this project, these advances have received recognition, first, through the production of `multimedia personal computers´, and more recently, by the announcement of low-cost teleconferencing (video/audio) systems