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Ultimate Video Calling Machine

Vialta Beamer
Vialta Beamer Photo: Amazon

Video calls weren’t novel in 2002 but they hadn’t exactly caught on yet. Vialta wanted to change that with the Beamer, a screen that added video capabilities to your home phone. It was easy to use, too: just connector the Beamer between your phone and a wall jack, much like an answering machine, and you’re set. There were no fees or accounts to create, just plug-and-play. And though it might not sound like it, at $300, the Beamer was actually much more affordable than alternatives.

At that time, seeing a loved one on a video call from your home was magical, regardless of the video quality. Still, the Beamer was a failure. In its review, The New York Times complained of distracting delays between the video and audio feeds and choppy, blurry playback.

Here is one of my favorite passages from the NYT review:

Once the call is under way, though, you find out one big reason videophones aren’t yet ubiquitous: ordinary phone lines are just not ‘’fat’’ enough to carry much more data than our relatively puny voices. Trying to fit a complete video and audio signal into such a narrow pipe is like trying to cook a turkey in a toaster.