2 Overview

The video conferencing system allows compressed digital video and audio signals to be interchanged among NRAO sites in Charlottesville, Green Bank, Santiago, Socorro, Tucson and the VLA over the observatory's frame-relay Intranet. The equipment that provides these basic capabilities is:

• A Polycom ViewStation or VSX processor with a video camera, two microphone pods, and a self-contained video signal processor;
• A remote control for the ViewStation or VSX, allowing each system to be controlled from the conference table;
• An optional secondary video camera with its own remote control;
• An optional document camera for showing high-quality video images of paper pages, transparencies, or hardware with a wide range of available magnifications;
• Large-format TV monitors.

This basic equipment provides point-to-point (two-site) video conferencing between any two NRAO video-capable sites.

Additional video hubs in Charlottesville and Socorro provide ``multi-conferencing" capability to support three-, four-, five-, or six-way meetings. An ISDN Gateway in Charlottesville allows video conferencing with non-NRAO sites over commercial ISDN telephone lines.

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