Microsoft RoundTable

Screenshot of a Microsoft Office Live Meeting 2007 remote conference using RoundTable. The panoramic video of the conference room is at the bottom of the screen and the active speaker video is in the upper-left.

Microsoft RoundTable was a videoconferencing device with a 360-degree camera that was designed to work with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 or Microsoft Office Live Meeting. RoundTable provided remote meeting participants with panoramic video of everyone sitting around the conference table. In addition, RoundTable contained active speaker detection technology that provides high-resolution video of the active speaker in a meeting, and tracked the flow of conversation in real time, switching between different meeting participants as they speak.

RoundTable was a plug-and-play USB device that also functioned as a standard PSTN speakerphone.

RoundTable was invented and originally developed by Dr Ross Cutler at Microsoft Research. It ran under Windows CE.

As of the 14th April 2009 the Roundtable device was discontinued and the hardware was rebranded as the Polycom CX5000. The device has an identical feature set but is branded as a Polycom unit.

External links

• Microsoft RoundTable - Official RoundTable product page on Microsoft website (Now leads to Microsoft Lync)
• Microsoft RoundTable product datasheet - On Microsoft website
• Polycom CX5000 - Official Product Page on Polycom website

Product Reviews

• InfoWorld review of RoundTable
• PC World review of RoundTable
• TMCNet review of RoundTable