Video Conferencing

Video Conferencing Systems

Hybrid meetings only work when the people in the room are as visible and audible as the people on the call. That is an equipment problem, and a laptop webcam at the end of a boardroom table does not solve it. NXP stocks 22 video conferencing products, almost all Logitech, plus the Jabra PanaCast 50 — from compact huddle room bars to full boardroom systems with touch controllers.

Size the system to the room

This is the whole decision. Get the room size right and everything else follows.

• Huddle room, 2–4 people — a compact all-in-one bar. The Rally Bar Huddle is built for exactly this: camera, speakers and microphones in one unit above or below the screen, wide enough to capture a small table.
• Small to medium room, 4–8 people — Rally Bar Mini or MeetUp. Both are single-unit bars with a wide field of view designed to take in a whole table from the front of the room. The MeetUp is long established in New Zealand meeting rooms and has an expansion microphone available for longer tables.
• Medium to large room, 8–16 people — Rally Bar. More camera reach, stronger audio pickup, and the ability to add components as the room needs them.
• Boardrooms and large spaces — a Rally Bar with expansion microphones, or the Rally Board 65, an all-in-one display and conferencing system with a built-in whiteboard. A mobile cart is available if it needs to move between spaces.

Buying a system rated for a bigger room than you have generally works fine. Buying one rated for a smaller room does not — the camera will not reach the end of the table and the microphones will not pick up the far seats.

Field of view: the specification that decides who is in frame

A camera's field of view determines how much of the room it captures from a fixed position. A standard laptop webcam is narrow, which is why people end up crowding together and the far seats disappear.

Purpose-built conference cameras are wide angle, so a whole table fits from the front of the room. The Jabra PanaCast 50 goes further with a panoramic 180-degree view, which suits rooms where people sit along a wall or around a corner rather than facing the camera.

The related feature is AI framing: the camera detects the people in the room and automatically frames the group, or switches to whoever is speaking. It is the difference between a static wide shot where everyone is small and distant and something that feels like a conversation. In larger rooms it is the single feature that most changes how the far end experiences the meeting.

Audio matters more than video

If a call is hard to hear, people disengage within minutes. If the video is slightly soft, nobody minds. Audio should be the first thing you check.

All-in-one bars include beamforming microphone arrays that focus on voices and suppress room noise — air conditioning, projector fans, keyboards. That is usually enough for the room size the bar is rated for.

Two things to watch:

Table length. A long boardroom table needs expansion microphones placed down its length, however good the bar is. The MeetUp expansion microphone and the Rally system's expansion options cover this.

Room acoustics. A room with hard walls, a glass partition and no soft furnishing will sound poor no matter what you install. Carpet, curtains, acoustic panels, or even a fabric pinboard on one wall make a measurable difference, and they cost far less than a bigger conferencing system. For individuals joining from a desk rather than a room, headsets remain the most reliable fix of all.

BYOD or a dedicated room system

BYOD — bring your own device — means people plug a laptop into the bar over USB-C and run the meeting from whatever platform they use. It is simpler, cheaper, and works with Teams, Zoom, Meet and anything else without configuration. The trade-off is that every meeting starts with somebody hunting for the cable.

A dedicated room system runs in appliance mode with its own touch controller, the Tap IP, so the room has a permanent identity, meetings appear on the controller, and joining is one tap. That is the right answer for rooms booked constantly, and it removes the five minutes lost at the start of every meeting. The Tap Scheduler adds a panel outside the room showing whether it is booked and letting people claim it on the spot.

Most organisations end up with both: BYOD in the small rooms, dedicated systems in the rooms that matter.

Do not overlook installation

Three practical points that get missed until install day:

1. Mounting. A bar sitting on a table or a shelf is rarely at the right height or angle. TV mounts for video bars and the dedicated mount kits put the camera at eye level under or above the display, which is where it belongs.
2. Cabling. USB-C runs have length limits. An active USB-C cable, 5m in this range, or an extender is what you need for anything beyond a short run from table to screen. Plan this before the install rather than during it.
3. Network. Use a wired connection. Video conferencing is the application where Wi-Fi contention shows up most obviously, and a network cable is the cheapest fix for call quality problems there is.

Whiteboards in hybrid meetings

The Logitech Scribe is a camera that points at a physical whiteboard and shares it as a clean video feed, removing the presenter and enhancing the writing so remote participants can actually read it. Worth knowing about if your teams still work on a wall rather than a screen.

Frequently asked questions

What video conferencing system do I need for a small meeting room?

For two to four people, a compact all-in-one bar such as the Rally Bar Huddle. For four to eight, a Rally Bar Mini or MeetUp. Match the system to the room size rather than the budget — a unit rated for a smaller room will not reach the far seats, either with the camera or the microphones.

What is the difference between a video bar and a webcam?

A webcam captures one person at a desk. A video bar combines a wide-angle camera, speakers and a beamforming microphone array in a single unit designed to cover a whole room from the front, so everyone at the table is seen and heard.

Do I need a dedicated room system, or can people just plug in their laptop?

BYOD over USB-C is simpler and platform-agnostic, and it suits rooms used occasionally. A dedicated system with a Tap IP controller gives the room its own identity and one-tap joining, which is worth it for rooms booked all day, every day.

How many microphones does a boardroom need?

It depends on table length rather than headcount. An all-in-one bar covers the room size it is rated for; beyond that, add expansion microphones down the table. If people at the far end have to raise their voices, you need another microphone, not a better camera.

Why does our video conferencing sound bad in one particular room?

Usually acoustics rather than equipment. Hard walls, glass and bare floors reflect sound and make voices muddy on the far end. Soft furnishing, carpet or acoustic panels will improve it more cheaply than new hardware. After that, check the room is on a wired network connection.

Does video conferencing gear work with both Teams and Zoom?

In BYOD mode the bar behaves as a USB camera, speaker and microphone, so it works with any platform the laptop runs. In appliance mode the system is configured for a specific platform, so decide which one the room is for before you deploy it.