Video calling is a growing market, considering Microsoft has made video chat a major part of its Windows Messenger Live portfolio. The exposure video calling gets through the prominence of the Microsoft (News - Alert) name is, of course, good for the industry as a whole because it promotes the technology as a whole. But video is a relatively new venture for Microsoft. There are companies that have been focused on video calling much longer.

SightSpeed, for one, has always placed high importance on video. “Through more than 10 years of R&D, it’s always been video first; that’s our calling card,” said SightSpeed’s CEO, Peter Csathy. “Best and easiest to use is the goal.”

SightSpeed as now announced the newest version of personal video services platform, SightSpeed 5.0. With this latest release, SightSpeed offers improved quality and functionality in its suite of easy-to-use Internet-based personal video and voice services.

Version 5.0 brings enhancements to SightSpeed’s video quality using the company’s new enhanced video codec, which provides improved image clarity and performance optimization. Users of SightSpeed 5.0 will immediately see significantly enhanced video clarity across all network conditions, while continuing to experience full 30 frames per second video, no latency, and perfect synch of video and voice unmatched by any other service.

“The first thing that will strike 5.0 users will be the amazing video quality and clarity delivered by our new enhanced video codec,” said Csathy.

SightSpeed 5.0 also offers improved connectivity. It is a direct peer to peer connection enabled via a central directory, which then drops out, leaving the direct P2P connection traversing firewalls on both ends. It is different from the Skype (News - Alert)-type supernode model, which many fear can compromise network security.

SightSpeed 5.0 also adds voice-only calling capability — PSTN Out- and In-calling — which work much like Skype’s calling services, with competitive pricing and high quality voice transmission.  SightSpeed 5.0 also introduces free and unlimited PC to PC voice-only calling. With 5.0, SightSpeed’s real-time communications suite is complete with the best quality video and voice over IP (VVoIP), voice over IP (VoIP) and text (IM) solution.

The most innovative of SightSpeed 5.0’s new features is a breakthrough extension of its personal video services, SightSpeedTV. SightSpeedTV is a place shifting television viewing feature that gives users with a TV capture card on their PC or laptop the ability to view their home TV anywhere in the world. The most noteworthy feature of SightSpeedTV is that, unlike many similar competitor solutions, it requires no additional hardware and comes complete with an intuitive “remote control” interface, enabling true channel surfing — from anywhere. SightSpeedTV will be introduced as a beta feature available for free to all SightSpeed users.

“SightSpeed TV is a very new direction, but a logical extension of what we already deliver,” said Csathy.

SightSpeedTV is purely a place shifting feature — it does not include any recording capabilities. Csathy says the company was mindful of content providers concerns with regard to this issue, but that, given SightSpeed’s other video capabilities, adding PVR functionality in the future is not out of the question.

For a sample of the quality of SightSpeedTV, read Tom Keating’s blog entry.

Notably, all of SightSpeed’s features are available to both PC and Mac users alike, a fact that Csathy pointed out frequently to TMC, and one that he feels is a differentiator for SightSpeed. The community of Mac users is growing, and SightSpeed already has a higher percentage of Mac users than most other platforms, and because that user group is extremely tight, SightSpeed’s Mac user base is likely to grow. SightSpeed is also designed to support Linux, but that platform has yet to be commercialized.

Last, but not least, SightSpeed 5.0 also adds important enhancements to its video blogging capabilities with extended two minute video recording time; and to overall ease of use, including support for portable devices and the introduction of “My SightSpeed” click-to-call buttons that can be placed in blogs, Web sites, and emails.

Of course, not everyone is ready to make video calls all the time, which is why SightSpeed has added voice-only calling to its capabilities. But consumers and business users alike will see that video calling can be as simple as connecting a camera — many newer laptops come with them already installed — and registering with SightSpeed. The point of adding different options is that people ought to have the power of choice over their communication methods Csathy believes.

“With SightSpeed 5.0, our goal was to delight our users by offering the world’s first complete suite of personal video and voice services available anywhere, giving them the best and easiest to use one-stop communications and content creation and publishing solution, as well as new SightSpeedTV,” said Csathy.

Csathy himself, uses SightSpeed daily to communicate with his colleagues in Berkeley from his home office. He says the attention is much more like having an in-person meeting, enabling both parties to focus on the task at hand more easily. Indeed, Csathy says that, despite not focusing heavily on the business space, SightSpeed has attracted a substantial business user base through word of mouth and personal use. Currently, about 30 percent of SightSpeed users are business customers. While the company still focuses on the consumer, it is cognizant of its growing business clientele and will add features that are appealing to them as well.

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Erik Linask is Associate Editor of INTERNET TELEPHONY. Most recently, he was Managing Editor at Global Custodian, an international securities services publication. To see more of his articles, please visit Erik Linask’s columnist page.