Logitech has been a big presence in the consumer PC peripheral space for ages, but their latest push follows us all to the office. The Logitech for Business division seeks to leverage the company’s assets to build out products that enhance business-to-business communications. And their latest efforts look a little familiar. Today Logitech is announcing the Logitech Webcam C930e, a 1080p USB camera with a few features specifically for enterprise users.
Looking quite like their last consumer grade camera, the Logitech Webcam HD, the new model borrows some of those units features, including the Carl Zeiss optics and the industrial design. The wide-angle lens helps provide less of a talking head experience on video calls, and could be invaluable if there’s any whiteboarding planned or multiple people on one end of a call. The onboard ISP handles autofocus and exposure adjustments, with the latter something of a necessity in many office environments as overhead fluorescents lead to lots of backlit scenes.
Encoding happens onboard, as well; and implements the H.264 Scalable Video Coding protocol. H.264 SVC allows for variable quality video streams to be encoded on the same bitstream, with the effect of providing a lower bandwidth option when network congestion would have lead to lots of artifacts. This is Logitech’s first video conferencing webcam that comes with SVC, a feature in many enterprise video conferencing solutions.
Out of the box the C930e comes fully compatible with Microsoft Lync and Cisco solutions, along with Skype certification and will ring in at $109.99 when it arrives this May. Since this isn’t targeting the consumer space (they may be content with the $99.99 Webcam HD), you’ll not find the C930e at Best Buy, but if you’re interested it will be available through sites that cater to enterprise.
5 Comments
Lync by nathanddrews on Friday, February 15, 2013
I was just in a meeting the other day where IT stated that we're rolling out Lync and the authorized webcams are the C930e, B910, and C525. Can't wait to try it out... for work. ;-) I know that Microsoft is using the Skype IP to drive this feature, but are Lync users able to make Skype calls yet?
nathanddrews
Reply
RE: Lync by merrillraman on Friday, February 15, 2013
Lync users can call (voice) Skype or vice versa once federation is setup. But the two platforms have different underlying technologies. Skype is p2p while Lync is point to point. Unifying them is not going to be easy, also enterprises maybe wary of p2p. Nevertheless hoping that Microsoft is able to do it!
I believe the Skype Federation will be going official at next week's Lync conference in San Diego. Lync calls are p2p as well until you add a third party which converts the call into a hosted conference on the company's Lync servers. Federated calls between a Lync user and Skype user will run through the Lync edge servers in your company's DMZ. I'm not exactly sure how well the integration will work initially, but I can't think they would enable this feature unless it was mostly reliable. We've got a lot of external business contacts that use Skype, so our employees are quite keen on the federation...
PTZ Webcam by BlackPatriot on Friday, February 15, 2013
I'm glad Logitech is moving more into the corporate space, as we're currently using the C920 for our webcams. But what we're really after is a USB PTZ version of the bigger Polycom and Cisco cameras, something that we can use in a meeting room without needing to pay the exorbitant prices for a full hardware codec, especially as so much of our VC traffic goes through desktop apps like Skype and Adobe Connect.
The only one we've found so far is the Vaddio USB cam, but it's limited to 720p because of USB2, despite the fact that the C920 (and presumably the C930e) can do 1080p over USB2 via hardware h.264 encoding. We really need something like that, a step up from a desktop webcam, but without the complexity and mess of a PTZ camera into a capture card (which often has complicated setup and maintenance to keep it working with all the apps) but a step below the $20k+ for a Polycom codec.
The only one we've found so far is the Vaddio USB cam, but it's limited to 720p because of USB2, despite the fact that the C920 (and presumably the C930e) can do 1080p over USB2 via hardware h.264 encoding. We really need something like that, a step up from a desktop webcam, but without the complexity and mess of a PTZ camera into a capture card (which often has complicated setup and maintenance to keep it working with all the apps) but a step below the $20k+ for a Polycom codec.
What's the difference? by carage on Saturday, February 16, 2013
Looks exactly the same as my C920...
Follow AnandTech
Latest from AnandTech
Microsoft Surface Pro mSATA SSD Upgrade: Dangerous but Successful
The AnandTech Podcast: Episode 16
AMD Reiterates 2013 GPU Plans: Sea Islands & Beyond
Logitech Announces Enterprise Focused Webcam
Tegra 4 Shipment Date: Still Q2 2013
Nexus 4 JDQ39 4.2.2 OTA Update Removes Unofficial LTE on Band 4
Apple Cuts Pricing on MacBook Pro with Retina Display and SSD Upgrades
Microsoft Surface Pro Teardown: mSATA SSD Inside
Times are Changing: Intel Building an IPTV Service + Box
Broadcom Announces BCM21892 - Their First 4G LTE-Advanced Baseband
CyberPowerPC FangBook X7: An Alternative to Clevo Whitebooks
NVIDIA's New F2P Bundle: The First Hit Is Free
Samsung Introduces REX Smart Feature Phone Line
Facebook Defeats German Watchdog Group in "Fake Names" Case
SoShare Beta Offers 1 TB File Transfers Via BitTorrent Browser Plugin
New Kind of Computer "Never Crashes"
Meteor Explodes Above Russian Urals, Leaves Nearly 1,000 Injured
FDA Approves First Retinal Prosthesis for the Blind
NYT Reporter Responds to Tesla's Accusations About Model S Article
Quick Note: U.S. Pricing, Availability for HTC One Revealed
Dell CEO Reduces Value of Shares in Hopes of Company Going Private
200 Mbps UK 5G Trial Looks to Scrap Air Traffic Radar for "Retro" System
Valve Fires Roughly 8 Percent of Its Employees
NYC Mayor Bloomberg Wants 20 Percent of All New Parking to be EV-Only
Update: Adobe CEO Dodges Questions on Overpricing in Australia
Checkmate: Tesla's Elon Musk Provides Driving Logs from NYT's "Peculiar" Model S Trip
Quick Note: Former BlackBerry CEO Sells Entire Stake in the Company
IOS 6.1 Bug Allows Anyone to Bypass Lockscreen to Access Contacts, Voicemail, Photos
Chrysler Takes the Plunge, Will Offer V6 Turbodiesel in Ram 1500 This Year
@alphacheez we did have expensive processors, but Intel didn't have as much leeway to play these games. long term they couldn't keep it up
@alphacheez @iancutress likely not, just an example of how things would be different if we had a competitive AMD
@IanCutress wow no you're right, that part is PCIe 2.0
@jomaKern Intel's 22nm smartphone silicon won't be ready until the end of this year,shipping in large quantities next year-if that helps :)
RT @anandtech: AMD Reiterates 2013 GPU Plans: Sea Islands & Beyond http://t.co/yjMMFM7d
@AcheronViper but it's not Merrifield :)
@AcheronViper I think it's a bit too early for Merrifield, there seems to be confusion about what's being used in that Lenovo phone.
@AcheronViper indeed!
That being said, looking forward to MWC as always. It's really become one of my favorite shows.
@anshelsag it must be post CES burnout, I can't imagine having to manage the exhibitor side of both shows back to back
Copyright © 1997-2013 AnandTech, Inc. All rights reserved. Terms, Conditions and Privacy Information.
Click Here for Advertising Information
