AT&T TO SELL COLOR VIDEO TELEPHONE

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, January 7, 1992                   TAG: 9201070223
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: NEW YORK                                 LENGTH: Medium
AT&T TO SELL COLOR VIDEO TELEPHONE
AT&T on Monday announced a $1,500 color video phone for consumers and said it would install a version of the device in airport and hotel lobbies later this year.
The video picture was somewhat jerky in the phone unveiled at a news conference, but AT&T said it was convinced the market for the device has ripened, nearly three decades after the technology was introduced.
The AT&T VideoPhnone 2500 arrives 28 years after the company first displayed a PicturePhone prototype at the New York World's Fair. AT&T never made a version of that black-and-white device. Instead, it built expensive videoconferencing rooms for busineess.
The VideoPhone 2500 sends and receives video and voice calls over existing phone lines for the same price as voice-only calls. The 6-pound phone contains a built-in camera and tiny video screen and is about the size of a phone-answering machine unit.
American Telephone & Telegraph Co. said it is the first company to offer picture phones that operate on household phone lines. Other systems, which start at about $20,000, require special digital phone lines and are aimed at business users.
AT&T said it thought picture phnoes would become as common as VCRs and camcorders, and the price should drop as demand picks up. It said it would license its technology so other companies can make the machines. The phones will not work with other video phones on the market.
The picture quality on the AT&T phone is far from perfect. The movement of a caller's face, for example, may look more like a series of snapshots than the full-motion video of television.
That's because the phone can only send up to 10 frames per second to show motion. TV is transmitted at 30 frames a second. The phone's tramsmission rate can drop to as low as two frames per second when the caller is moving quickly.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB