...the product to have "no perceived latency", a slight transmission delay was apparent during a live demonstration with HP executives in London.
With the first test Halo room up and running since March 2003, DreamWorks has 10 of such rooms spread across its offices in California, Bristol and Hong Kong.
Leonard said Halo, used by the company's creative team during the production of Shrek 2 and Madagascar, is "changing the reason we need to travel". "For us, the returns on investment from the Halo rooms took six months," he said.
DreamWorks is looking to set up similar Halo sites in its new studios in Taipei and Mumbai.
HP has 13 Halo rooms set up across its offices worldwide, including Barcelona, Israel and Singapore. Videoconferences between its research and development teams in Singapore and Barcelona now frequently take place in the respective Halo rooms, said Ken Crangle, HP's general manager for Halo.
"We can now meet more often and for shorter times," he said, noting that HP's imaging and printing group was able to reduce its travel costs by more than 2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2005. The company is expecting a 26 percent increase in the use of Halo rooms across HP in 2006, he added.
According to a study by Wainhouse Research released in October 2005, enterprises spend an average 12 hours per month using traditional videoconferencing equipment. Among Halo customers, which currently include chip maker AMD and food and beverage company PepsiCo, this figure increases to 131 hours, Crangle said.
"We've been able to cut down on executive travel and we are able to have impromptu meetings with colleagues located miles away," said Hector de J. Ruiz, AMD's chairman of the board, president and chief executive. With plans to expand its Halo deployment to Europe and Asia, Ruiz said that AMD currently has two Halo rooms in the US, one each in Austin, Texas and Sunnyvale, California.
Estimated to cost $550,000 (£312,000) each if implemented in smaller sites, Halo rooms are probably outside the reach of smaller businesses. However, the rooms are available under a 48-month payment scheme where companies fork out $30,000 (£17,000) per month. HP also offers payment plans for 36 and 60 months.
According to HP, the network and service for each room is likely to cost US$18,000 per month, depending on local telecommunication charges in the various countries.
Crangle said the company is also exploring possibilities of offering Halo in varying room configurations, and will soon provide support for connection between multiple Halo rooms. Currently, users can only communicate between two Halo sites.
According to Crangle, HP and DreamWorks share the revenues from the sale of Halo, which falls under HP's imaging and printing group. This product group alone is worth $25.2bn, he said.
