Picture phone

A videophone is a telephone with a video display, capable of simultaneous video and audio for communication between people in real-time. Videophone service provided the first form of videotelephony, later to be followed by videoconferencing, webcams, and finally high-definition telepresence.

At the dawn of its commercial deployment from the 1950s through the 1990s, videotelephony also included 'image phones' which would exchange still images between units every few seconds over conventional POTS-type telephone lines, essentially the same as slow scan TV systems. The development of advanced technology video codecs and high bandwidth allowed videophones to provide high quality colour service between users almost anyplace in the world that the Internet is available, often at low or nominal costs.

In the present day videophones have become widely available at reasonable cost, although not widely used in everyday communications for a variety of reasons. However, they are particularly useful to the deaf and speech-impaired who can use them with sign language, and are becoming increasingly popular for educational instruction, telemedicine and to those with mobility issues.

The name 'videophone' never became as standardized as its earlier counterpart 'telephone', resulting in a variety of names and terms being used worldwide, and even within the same region or country. Videophones are also known as 'video phones', 'videotelephones' (or 'video telephones') and often by an early trademarked name Picturephone, which was the world's first commercial videophone produced in volume. The compound name 'videophone' slowly entered into general use after 1950, although 'video telephone' likely entered the lexicon earlier after video was coined in 1935.

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