Show HN: Our telepresence setup

This is almost exactly what I was going to recommend setting up at our company.<p>Yes, a Mac Mini to an LCD TV isn't the most thrilling of tech articles, but I've been very keen to hear experiences of people using these sort of cobbled-together from commodity hardware "ghetto Telepresence" setups.<p>Our needs (and budget) just don't fit with the more expensive all-in-one solutions. And I imagine the quality of the cobbled-together experience can vary wildly depending on the hardware configuration. So I was excited to read about a setup that is working well for someone.

Related: anyone experimenting with telepresence for remote workers, where most of the team are still in the office?<p>-- Have someone bring a laptop with webcam into a conference room? (poor-man's anybots)<p>-- How to deal with whiteboards? Camera? Shared drawing tools? Not satisfied with what I've tried thus far. Would a 720p camera have enough resolution for whiteboards?<p>-- Making everyone work as if they were remote--campfire, webex, skype, etc., even if they are all in the same office?<p>(NB I'm moving overseas in a few months and I'm trying to figure out how I can work closely with my team from 16000 miles away)

Telepresence robots are getting pretty easy to build now. <a href="http://samratjp.posterous.com/look-ma-im-controlling-a-telepresence-robot" rel="nofollow">http://samratjp.posterous.com/look-ma-im-controlling-a-telep...</a><p>Wouldn't it be cool to have one of those for every remote worker so they can roll around the office and find people they need to talk to/point the camera at whatever is needed. Plus you get a screen to do screen sharing onto.

&#60;cisco plug&#62; There's the $600 version that uses your existing TV also. Imagine this may be closer to what startup's could use. Monthly subscription of $25 <a href="http://home.cisco.com/en-us/telepresence/umi/what-you-need" rel="nofollow">http://home.cisco.com/en-us/telepresence/umi/what-you-need</a> &#60;/cisco plug&#62;

I don't mean to be critical, but I am underwhelmed.<p>From the initial picture, I was expecting a homegrown alternative to Cisco's Telepresence which, is actually quite awesome, if not really really expensive.<p>What I got instead was an iMac and a monitor.

Has anyone used Kinect's video chat? Does it work with computers or is it like the PS3 where you have to have another PS3 to have video?<p>I'm really surprised no one has tried to deploy some business apps for consoles, I'd imagine it'd take off pretty well as it'd be a great excuse for team building after hours.

I hope the video codec can cope with this, or else this is going to eat a lot of bandwidth for nothing.

Might want to install FaceTime for Mac as well ...