Star Wars telepresence successfully demonstrated at BlachReportDialog

It took place between a studio in London and a live audience in Berlin for the German live communications conference, BlachReportDialog – just one week after the fiasco of a major US TV channel’s ‘hologram’ report, when the anchorman turned out not to be looking at a hologram of a reporter, but a red dot. The hologram answered questions, laughed, looked into their eyes and was, to all appearances, real. It was, in fact, Ian O’Connell, one of the three directors of Musion, a small British telepresence company founded in 2002. He explained how this remarkable system worked and was followed by his PA Corinna Jess, who became a real-life Princess Leia, who sang an aria from Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus and chatted to her stunned parents sitting in the audience. “This demonstration represents what is possible when you combine incredible video technology with an advanced video network,” says John Dumbleton, SVP and managing director of Masergy. “Musion’s faster frame rate of 50 interlaced frames per second creates the natural image edge blurring necessary for 3D images to look realistic. This incredible quality is possible because Masergy’s global network was purpose-built to deliver superior video performance at all times and under all network conditions.” The lesson for business: Musion’s Star Wars style technology and Masergy’s Global Network Connection can now take telepresence to an entirely new level. Forget the old days of video conferencing – and forget travel.