MILPITAS, Calif., May 31, 2011 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Creative Technology Ltd today announced that Skype has certified the new Creative Live!® Cam inPerson HD for video and voice quality, meeting the exacting requirements for HD video calling in Skype. The Creative engineering team set out to significantly improve the video and voice quality of web cams to provide an outstanding HD video calling experience with Skype. The result is the Creative Live! Cam inPerson HD, in which Creative has integrated an H.264 video encoding processor, ensuring the fastest possible video frame rate for HD video calling and alleviating the problem of choppy video that users often experience, even with lower definition video calling.
By performing the H.264 encoding on the Creative Live! Cam inPerson HD instead of using the PC, the user is not required to have the highest-performance PC to experience smooth HD video quality with Skype. In addition to the leap forward in video quality, the Creative Live! Cam inPerson HD features crystal-clear voice through the implementation of Creative's quad mic array. To achieve improvement in voice quality, the mics are precisely spaced across the nine-inch flat-panel surface of the camera. This quad mic implementation coupled with Creative's noise-canceling technology removes ambient noise much more effectively than web cams with single or stereo mics and allows the user to be heard with substantially greater clarity.
"In order for web cams to become Skype Certified we put them through a rigorous video and voice testing and qualification process," said Ed Botterill, Head of Skype Certification at Skype. "The Live! Cam inPerson met these exacting specifications and provides an excellent solution for Skype video calling."
The Creative Live! Cam inPerson HD features built-in H.264 compression, in order to deliver smooth, glitch-free HD video, ensuring fluid motion and high-quality video streaming over the web. Often when users experience jerky motions or choppy video when video calling, the cause is likely the PC's CPU being overworked while trying to process the stream of data. With hardware accelerated video all of this work is offloaded from the PC's CPU and performed right on the Creative Live! Cam inPerson HD, delivering smooth movements and video calls every time. The Creative Live! Cam inPerson HD also features auto focus, for clear, detailed images and videos from a range of distances, giving users the freedom to sit directly in front of the camera or up to 10 feet away and still be seen clearly.
"We wanted to eliminate choppy video, which is typically caused when the PC can't handle the encoding fast enough, so we engineered the camera to have the highest frame rate possible," said Steve Erickson, Vice President and General Manager for Audio and Video at Creative Labs, Inc. "As a technology leader in audio and voice processing for more than three decades we know that voice quality is critical to having a great video calling experience, so we also elevated the audio in the Creative Live! Cam inPerson HD with a quad mic array. Just like you can't accept a phone call when the audio is poor, you can't have a great video call with poor voice."
Rounding out the robust feature set of the Creative Live! Cam inPerson HD is the bundled Live! Central 3 software suite with advanced video and audio effects, avatar creation, movie creation, desktop sharing features and surveillance capabilities.
Pricing and Availability
The Creative Live! Cam inPerson HD is available now for US$149.99 at creative.com. For more information about Creative's complete line of web cams check out www.us.creative.com.
About Creative
Creative is a worldwide leader in digital entertainment products. Famous for its Sound Blaster® sound cards and for launching the multimedia revolution, Creative is now driving digital entertainment on the PC platform with products like its highly acclaimed ZEN® MP3 and portable media players. Creative's innovative hardware, proprietary technology, applications and services leverage the Internet, enabling consumers to experience high-quality digital entertainment - anytime, anywhere.
About Skype
Skype is a software-based communications platform that offers high-quality, easy-to-use tools for both consumers and businesses to communicate and collaborate globally through voice, video and text conversations. Founded in 2003 and based in Luxembourg, our mission is to be the communications platform of choice around the world. We enable users with virtually any Internet-connected device to communicate with each other by voice, video and instant message for free, or make low cost voice calls to fixed or mobile numbers virtually anywhere in the world. We have 124 million connected users and our users placed 95 billion calling minutes over Skype in the first half of 2010, approximately 40% of which were video. Skype can be downloaded onto computers, mobile phones and other connected devices for free at www.skype.com.
This announcement relates to products launched in the United States. Availability is subject to change without notice and may differ elsewhere in the world according to local factors and requirements. Live!, Creative inPerson, ZiiMeet, Sound Blaster and ZEN are trademarks or registered trademarks of Creative Technology Ltd in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Creative Labs, Inc.
Susie Hayne
Tel 408-546-6440
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The following pictures are available for download:
| [Image] | Live! Cam inPerson HD |
| [Image] | Live! Cam inPerson HD angle |