Talk:PictureTel

Hello to all! I am Jeff Rodman, formerly employee #5 (Director of Hardware Engineering) of PictureTel 1984-1987, and have just made changes to the PictureTel page. These include some points that are not documented anywhere else to my knowledge but are likely to be of interest to a reader because the PictureTel products were fairly game-changing due to their use of a new and much more data-efficient algorithm that combined motion analysis with transform coding. I don't think these additions are biased or inflammatory (or wrong), but some are not easily documented other than by eyewitness accounts such as my own. The changes are in these categories (as mentioned in the summaries bar at the bottom of the edit page):

> Added more product names. It's still an incomplete list, but now includes a more complete timeline, and PictureTel's very first product, the C-2000 codec. > The name of the company changed early in its life, from PicTel to PictureTel. I added a brief explanation as to why. > Corrected product names. No products were ever named PicTel anything, as the name change PictureTel had happened long before. > Added a technical explanation, in extremely simple terms, of the new algorithm. > Added what made the new algorithm valuable and how it related to the ongoing changes at the time in the data communications industry (the emergence of dial-up data via ISDN). > Added mention of PictureTel's participation in, and contributions to, standardization of video and audio coding, and data transmission. This opening-up facilitated the development of online video such as YouTube, but I do not mention that in the article.

Thanks for your thoughts and comments,

Walkranrunning (talk) 21:07, 8 June 2020 (UTC)walkranrunning

Walkranrunning (talk) 19:25, 30 June 2020 (UTC)walkranrunning