Picture Phones: Promise or Threat?

It sounded like a great idea back at the New York World's Fair in 1964: the picture phone. Not only could you hear your caller, you could see him or her in glorious black and white. It was such a great idea that AT&T reportedly spent half a billion dollars on it and predicted that by 1980, a million picture-phone sets would be in use. But it turned out this was an idea that nobody wanted to pay for. Since then, the concept has reared its head at regular intervals, and the Duo tangle with it in the form of two stand-alone units as well as a Webcam solution.

If you've ever watched video over a dial-up connection, you know it's not a pleasant experience; the new stand-alone units, therefore, rely on broadband connections, plugging directly into your router. Angela was more impressed than Steve by the Packet8 Broadband Phone Adapter, which looks like a standard office phone, except for its color LCD screen and a camera. In essence, it lives on the Net but acts like a phone: it has its own number, it can make calls in or out, and it can do all sorts of clever phone tricks. Each of these units costs $250, and then you have to sign up for service that costs $30 a month; that gets you unlimited calling, voice, and video in the United States and Canada.

However, during testing the Duo noticed that voice-to-video synchronization was slightly off, giving the calls an odd, anime-in-translation feeling. There's another set of problems with the Packet8 that extend to the entire category: what exactly should one look like talking on them? No one wants to look at you holding a handset to your head, but the Packet8's speakerphone was, like most speakerphones, less than great. And then there's the camera-angle situation. The Packet8's camera shoots its images from about chest level, which means that users end up with a universally unflattering gigantic chin. (The angle also leaves most viewers looking a little shifty-eyed.) Angela also notes a potentially even-less-flattering sight: a nation of picture-phone users in their pajamas. (She's aware it could be worse, but doesn't care to think about that.)