h a l f b a k e r yA few slices short of a loaf.
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He: Hi, Do you want to meet for dinner today ??
She: Are you kidding. I'm in the New York and you are in Houston. how could we ??
He: Just drop by your nearest Mc-Donald and when you order the burger, Just say you want the "VC" with it. They will guide you to the table with a big monitor and you will
see me there.
The video conferencing technology is already there and there are people who want to eat out with their loved once who live accross the country. I still wonder why no chain restaurants have already though about it.
Think of the other possibilities. You feel bored and you have to eat alone. Drop by a restaurant with video conferencing facility and browse through similar loners from across the country. Invite one for dinner and if you like the company pick up the bill. Cute gals get fee meals without the after-dinner worries.
A little innovative touch in the restaurant seating arrangement. Fit the monitor and microphone and bingo. dollars. .dollars .. dollars...
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Or you could rent a videoconferencing facility and bring a sack lunch. You'll die of sticker shock when you see what those puppies rent for, though. Which, come to think of it, is a good reason why this idea, while cute, is probably not very feasible--the cost would be far too high (the "VC" option would probably be something like $200-300USD/hr at each end). |
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I agree with bristolz. I've seen this idea kicked around before, and it's simply to cost prohibitive. Video conferencing is not a "commodity" technology, which is what it would need to be inorder to do what you suggest. Large corporations can't get video conferencing right across their own companies. It's a goodway off before bandwidth and other technology standards converge to make this possible. |
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Surely it's not expensive to have a leased line (ours is 2Mbit for about £80 a month) and a load of webcams at a decent resolution ? It would be like setting up an internet cafe, but into an existing restaurant. The real cost comes if you were to set up a chain of restaurants, but I'm sure you could softly softly catchee monkey. |
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I don't think this is as unfeasible as some here suggest. A chain restaurant that wanted to offer such technology could have economies of scale not present in most such businesses, and would not have the same reliability requirements as business users of teleconferencing (if a teleconferencing system fails during a major business meeting, the lost productivity may easily cost thousands or in a few cases millions of dollars). Getting a system 90% reliable is one thing; getting it 99% is another. Each extra 'nine' [i.e. 99.9%, 99.99%, etc.] adds another hefty chunk to the cost. For an application like this, 98% reliability would probably be adequate. |
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I wouldn't be surprised to see this idea actually happen within ten years of now. |
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