Two conflicting articles published this week about video conferencing:

• Robert X. Cringely recently learned about telepresence (HD video conferencing) and predicts home-based units, possibly sold by Apple, could be the next "Killer App". Just bring to market an attachable HD video camera for the growing population of HD flat-panel TVs already sitting in American's living room and you have a home version of telepresence. Not ready to buy one yet? Well, Cringely says "This is 100 percent analogous to the introduction of color TV in the 1950s. People didn't know they wanted color TV until they saw color TV. But once they saw it, the lure of color TV was instant and obvious". Just imagine pointing a camera at the typical football fan watching the Lions take on the Packers Sunday afternoon. Smile!

• BusinessWeek.Com just published "BT: Small Firms Snub Videoconferencing " in which "BT's general manager of broadband, VoIP and software services, Chris Lindsay" said "Customers are not seeing the increased benefit from having the visual piece over and above the audio" to explain why demand for video conferencing has been low.

What do you think? Do you need "the visual piece" to effectively collaborate? I don't think you do (in most cases).

To me this looks like a classic example of the type of problem technologists get into as noted by Pip Coburn in his book The Change Function:

"More often than not, products are created in a build-it-and-they-will-come mentality that relies solely upon Moore's Law for lowering prices and what can be called Grove's Law of generating 10x changes and improvements" (from Chapter Two of the Change Function; an abridged version is available at Fast Company).

All we need is a higher resolution video camera and display (which are already in many living rooms btw) along with higher bandwidth. Then, Cringely tells us we simply need to find the price point where it becomes "killer".

The problem is this approach forgets an important point. Does the product solve a problem for the potential customer? Coburn refers to a customer's problem as a "crisis" and says "If the level of crisis is higher than the total perceived pain of adopting a new solution, then a change will occur." By the way, "perceived pain "goes well beyond the cost of the product.

IMHO, put a video conferencing unit into the typical American living room and you will certainly create a crisis. But not the one Cringely would like.

Update: Melanie Turek reports Cisco is considering developing a home telepresence system. Apparently talk about this was hinted at during a discussion with reporters at a recent analyst briefing.