video conference

Conducting a conference between two or more participants at different sites by using computer networks to transmit audio and voice data.

For example, a point-to-point (two-person) video conferencing system works much like a video telephone. Each participant has a video camera, microphone, and speakers mounted on his or her computer. As the two participants speak to each other, their voices are carried over the network and delivered to the other's speakers, images appearing in front of the video camera appear in a window on the other participant's monitor. Multipoint videoconferencing allows three or more participants to sit in a virtual conference room and communicate as if they were sitting right next to one another. Until the mid 90s, the hardware costs made videoconferencing prohibitively expensive for most organizations, but they are much advanced and affordable today.

Many analysts believe that videoconferencing will be one of the fastest-growing segments of the computer industry in the latter half of the decade.