THE #1 AV NEWS PUBLICATION. PERIOD.

Altia Systems Claims to Kill the PTZ with Integrated Three-Camera Solution

Everyone knows the value of a PTZ in conference room solutions. But, in small rooms, what if you had an integrated solution that used three cameras that covered the entire room — would you need an PTZ?

That’s what Altia Systems is hoping will replace the PTZ — the company’s three-camera packaged solution called PanaCast 2. It’s basically three cameras shooting one continuous seamed image that’s 180-degrees and 4K resolution. While wide-angle or wide field-of-view cameras have been around for a long time, most produce significant distortion, causing horizontal and vertical lines to bend (so-called barrel distortion) and form a very unnatural image unusable for videoconferencing.

panacast-1_punchy-768x352-0117

Altia took a different approach. The company took three HD cameras (each with a more modest field-of-view) and stitched the three images together dynamically in the camera while also adding image correction to produce a single video stream that can cover up to 180° with very little distortion (the image below is an example of a room covered by the PanaCast 2).

office_view_punchy-768x212-0117

It’s an interesting solution and one that will certainly be emulated by the biggies in the market — and, if Cisco, Polycom and Logitech aren’t already considering buying Altia Systems, they should! It’s compatible with every single VTC system (hardware or cloud-based) on the market today (yes, including Skype) and just plus into a computer’s USB port.

Here are all the specs.

Top