If you spend a fair amount of time doing Skype video calls, you may have noticed that it can be far from ideal, especially if you’re using an iPad or other tablet to do the chatting. For one thing you need to prop it up somewhere, and for another you’re not exactly getting the full extent of the sound coming out of the rear mounted speakers.
The new iTOi Video Booth turns your iPad (and we suspect other Android tablets of the same size) into a video call maestro. The device uses mirror optics, plus a free app which you install on the tablet, to deliver a personal video booth experience. One where reflections are cut down, the sound is fed to the front rather than the rear, and one where you are much more on an eye to eye level (iTOi geddit?) than with a mere tablet on your lap.
The unit also comes with a built-in teleprompter function, so you can do professional looking video shoots while talking direct to the camera, just like the network news people, only without all the fancy hair styles. The iTOi (weird name, no?) works with Skype, FaceTime, Google Hangouts and YouTube, it’s a fully hands free experience all round.
The device needs the right size of tablet (which we assume is iPad size) so it won’t work with an iPad Mini for example, and you won’t find the apps in the Google Play or Apple stores yet, because it’s not launched until the 13th of this month. You’ll pay $149.99 for the product when it does arrive.