Choosing the right video-conferencing equipment can be compared to selecting the right ingredients for your culinary recipe – you can mix an edible and digestible menu item to satisfy your hunger or conjure up a delicious piece de resistance to please your senses and tune you in on a deeper creative process of higher productivity. To put it simple, there are various ways to equip the video conference and naturally various prices to pay.

Closing in on the video-conferencing ingredients in terms of tools and devices, the minimum range should include a camera, a monitor, a speaker, a microphone, the corresponding software and transmission lines. Most video-conferencing systems require a codec, aka compressor/decompressor interface, whose job is to compress video and audio materials to be sent over at a higher speed and an echo canceller. However, the higher the compression ratio is, the poorer is the quality of the information delivered.

More sophisticated video-conferencing rooms can be equipped with high-performance end-points, multipoint conference units, elaborate routing systems and viewstations. The price range for video-conferencing equipment can vary from $200 to $100,000 per solution. But those are extreme points. The overall costs of systems differ depending on the purpose and environment, for which and where the solutions are used: there can be a wide margin between one-to-one small business video-conferencing kits and one-to-many board meeting conference rooms. SBC offers an all-inclusive executive system including installation and first year maintenance for $8,900 and Dual Monitor Room System including installation and first year maintenance for $20,100.

You can start summing up your expenses by putting the cost of the network type you choose on the list. Today, there are two types of lines that can be used for transmitting integrated video and audio information: an ISDN (circuit switched network) and an IP network. The first one is alike to the telephone line, while the second employs Internet capacities. ISDN lines are rather expensive as against their IP counterparts, as they charge per minute for a long-distance call, which can easily amount to $60 per hour at 384 kbps, whereas IP-based solution is much cheaper.

The quality of video-conferencing and thus the outcome of real-time communication greatly depend of the quality of equipment. There are numerous brands and companies engineering, marketing and distributing video-conferencing solutions today with Tandberg, Cisco, Clear One and Polycom being among paramount. As for the prices they suggest, a Polycom video-conferencing kit is available at $3,300-$17,700 and viewstations can be traded for $4,000. They can have additional features, for example Tandberg 8000 Video Conferencing Equipment comes in 10 languages: Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish and Swedish.

You can turn to the manufacturer of the equipment that you have purchased to get user instructions, maintenance tips and first-hand commentary on advantages and specifications. But if you are looking for something to choose from a line of analog equipment, it is better to turn to the vendor as the manufacture is most likely to offer you a product within his/her own range. Your vendor will typically extend the range to a more diverse choice, in which different companies are represented.