Videophones have been a dream for many years, and with this telephone the dream almost became reality. This videophone was the first one BT made commercially available, in the 1990s. It promised callers the chance to see, and be seen by, the person they were talking to.
The snag was it didn't work very well. The technology of the telephone was good, but the network's bandwidth wasn't broad enough to carry all the pictures, sound and colours at once. A caller could see the person but the image would shift very jerkily from one frame to another, which was quite disconcerting.
The telephone was designed with a flip-up screen on the right, where the video played. They were available for £500 each or two for £900 - but with such poor image quality, and with so few others having them, take up was minimal
The snag was it didn't work very well. The technology of the telephone was good, but the network's bandwidth wasn't broad enough to carry all the pictures, sound and colours at once. A caller could see the person but the image would shift very jerkily from one frame to another, which was quite disconcerting.
The telephone was designed with a flip-up screen on the right, where the video played. They were available for £500 each or two for £900 - but with such poor image quality, and with so few others having them, take up was minimal
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