Most webcams right now are basically substandard video camera lenses hooked up to a chip that connects to your USB. The video quality is full of compression artifacts and blurrier than your Saturday nights in college. Of course, development is ongoing for something better than this, and here is some good news.
Point Grey is now developing a new webcam that utilizes USB 3.0 to broadcast uncompressed 1080p video at 60 frames per second. Before anyone says that this is way too good to be released into the market right now, take note that this may come out as soon as late 2009 or early 2010. If you got a 42-inch monitor like they used for their demonstration, then you will be in for one of the best online video experiences of your life because it really is that stunning.
While merely a prototype as of now, it is composed of parts from different companies, such as a Sony IMX036 CMOS image sensor. It seems that they tried to bring in the best for this one because what came out really was impressive. With the new USB 3.0 platform, the transfer speed is so good that video need not be compressed anymore to stream properly. Well, USB 3.0 is not widely available yet, so it will be quite a wait.
But still, the potential for this is quite good. While the prototype did lack an autofocus, it did have a manual focus to capture insanely crisp images. Displaying 1920×1080 video without any sort of compression is no easy task. Huge amounts of data is being pushed from the camera to the computer, so the USB 3.0 platform may be good enough to let this through. There are PCI-Express cards that have USB 3.0 ports, so it is not all so bad. If you are into the bleeding edge, then put this in your checklist.
Now, if only broadband internet speeds can catch up…
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