Where are our video phones?

I can't help but notice that all of the historical concept art shows people sitting in one place while being fully-clothed and presentable. But phones have never been used that way at home. Even before wireless phones, people would buy extra-long cords for their phone handset so they could (for example) walk around in the kitchen preparing food while talking. And because phone calls are synchronous and intrusive, it's easy (and was historically common) to receive phone calls when you're not ready for video. I suspect that those two factors were at least as important as the high price in dooming any attempt at home video phones.

There's more of a case for long-distance video calls, but even long-distance voice calling was so expensive in the pre-cell phone era that it was rarely used for personal calls. Even the video calling we do today looks more like business -- scheduled conference calls -- than the personal phone calls of old.

They are here. Our family is constantly video-calling with friends and family on our phones using apps like Marco Polo. They nailed the asynchronous video-walkie-talkie experience really well. We stay in touch far more with it now because it's often easier and more expressive than just text and doesn't have the synchronous "blocking" nature of a phone call.

We all have videophones on our Apple iPhone/iPad/iWatch and macOS laptops and use Signal app with our Android cellphone friends.

My entire extended family use videophone everyday for the past 12 years. (We are a Deaf-related family). Heck, we can even sign to a FCC-certified operator and they'll translate into spoken words to just about ANYBODY (include the dreaded navigation of press-5-for-somewhere-in-the-IT-dept and voicemail hell) and do the reverse in turn ... many times a day.

The good part? During grocery shopping (you detest that, don't you, but you detest the rant-n-raving of the wrong selection more) and unsure of which can of chile con carne, chile w/o beans, chile with beans, chile beans, chile beans with meat or something to get, videophone your spouse and show the shelf racks.

Best for watching baby's first-step, graduation, first bicyling, "Look, Ma! NO HANDS!", and many more.

It's awesome that we can see each other's warm face from up to 9,000 miles away whenever we want.

What's the big deal? Oh, you don't have an Apple product? Sorry.

Its ironic to me that science fiction writers assumed that people would prefer video to audio-only for regular conversations, but now that just about everyone has the option of video for every call (if they're using a smartphone) they still usually prefer audio-only, or even better yet text (which is even lower bandwidth than audio).

I see a surprising number of people wandering around downtown or through a department store with their phone held out in front of them for a video call. Not even "I'm showing you the options for that thing you wanted", just "give me company while I make a Target run". Bizarre.

I have one in my kitchen. Google decided it needs to use Allo, or Duo, or who knows what for it to work so it never gets used. We have a Facebook thing in the living room that I keep unplugged 24x7 for christmas and big events that family use for video chats. Every phone made has facetime or a selfie cam. The problem is there isn't one catch all protocol which frustrates me.

It reminds me an old joke: "when technology allows radios to transmit pictures, it will be the end of the television"

I always associate the videophone concept with Max Headroom, where the president of ZikZak Corporation used one to glower at his underlings, Big Brother style, from an enormous screen on one wall. Son of a gun, today's corporate meeting rooms have video conferencing setups, replete with a huge screen on one wall, so that use case (there were others in the show) appears to have been bang on the money.

If you're going to argue that we don't really have picturephones, just computers that do video and audio over the network, you should argue we don't really have a telephone network anymore, just a computer network that routes audio, video, and other things. The backhaul for my parents' "landline" is 5G.

> The phone company started working on video calling when it sent a speech by Herbert Hoover — then the Secretary of Commerce — from Washington to New York in 1927. The video was only one way and with a limited frame rate.

This not a phone call. This is cable television.

> The reality is, we don’t have true picture phones. We have computers with sufficient bandwidth to carry live video and audio. Your FaceTime call is going over the data network.

So, the former is a video phone, despite being one way, but the latter is not a video phone because it was sent over a "data network."

POTS is a "data network". Hence the ability to transmit faxes, or use TCP/IP with it.

I get this is about an over-the-wire standard for video calls, but it seems silly to me. I'm a younger millennial, and looking at my recent calls, I have about a 10:1 ratio factime:telephone. If I can use facetime I will, every time, and I don't actually know anyone who doesn't prefer it. Facial expressions, situational context of the person on the other end, and being able to seemlessly show something are all so valuable

Film director Wim Wenders's "Until the end of the world" from 1991 shows a very interesting future with "video fax" and "video phones". And instead of CD's it shows credit-card-form audio storage. The way this film depicts how video phones might work was actually convincing. Still, right now when someone tries to FaceTime me, I decline...

In my living room? In my hand? On my desk? I've got a smart display sitting there which can do video calls, which is basically a video phone, and my smartphone and laptop have a variety of ways to do video calls. I can even attach a webcam to my streaming media box on my HDTV and do a zoom call.

The title should have been, "We're living in the future!"

The historical thought was that videophones would be these discrete electronic devices and instead they kept shrinking and getting cheaper until now where it only costs a few more dollars to add a camera and a microphone to any electronic device.

People do not communicate with video (except the deaf). We communicate with voice and text. Try muting your computer and disconnecting your keyboard

We have had them for years and everyone (most people) hate them.