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the experience. Unfortunately for the Viper, its negative traits overshadow the few posi-

tive traits so severely that it renders it almost pointless to even consider the Viper as a

valid solution for Metropolia. It is unfortunate that a device with as much potential as

the Viper, it stumbles and fails due to a few major issues.

One of the major issues, for facilities such as Metropolia, is the difficulty of moving IP-

based devices from room-to-room as it is uncertain if the new premises have an active

and available IP-socket, and devices such as the Haivision Viper, which works as its

own server as well, cuts off all access to the published content when disconnected

from the internet. Although it can save all of the published material onto its internal

hard-disk storage unit (if the capture option was turned on when streaming occurred), it

creates a dilemma for those who need access to the material while the device is offline,

making it even more vital to have classroom integrated systems.

The current solution used by Metropolia for streaming and in many cases capture pur-

poses is the Adobe ConnectPro. The ConnectPro was the easiest to set-up and re-

quired the least amount of fixing, although it did complicate things, when both the cam-

era and soundcard stopped being recognised by ConnectPro after the addition of the

USB-hub. Apart from that minor technological malfunction the testing and the lecture

afterwards went smoothly. In general the ConnectPro, does satisfying the require-

ments set by Metropolia but it is the best solution available for the time being, budget

as well as from the usability perspective.

The total price for the equipment for the ConnectPro solution was around 700-800 €,

since Metropolia already has the license (~5000 €), still making it a much cheaper solu-

tion for Metropolia, in comparison to the Crestron CaptureLive HD (~10000 € total) and

the Haivision Viper (~20 000 € total). Given all the facts, for the time being Metropolia

should stick to the Adobe ConnectPro solution as it is readily available. However, the

university should consider investing in a platform and service designed for the sole

purpose of capturing, streaming and publishing content, for eLearning purposes or oth-

erwise.

In an ideal world, solutions such as the system integrated classroom built for the Cali-

fornia University of Pennsylvania (CalU), that contains an interactive touchscreen panel

and push-to-talk microphone for every student in the lecture hall among other things,

would be the ultimate standard that to at least some extent Metropolia should strive for.