Microsoft Teams Rooms upgraded in ‘biggest release of year’

Microsoft Teams Rooms for Windows has made a major leap forward, with four new features that will change the way people see and hear each other in hybrid meetings.

The features are now available with a Teams Rooms Pro licence, in update 4.18.35.0.

Among the new features are improvements to the imagery available from non-AI and from intelligent cameras and two improvements to Front Row. Front Row is gaining long-awaited spatial audio capabilities and unified backgrounds for people appearing in Front Row gallery.

Writing on LinkedIn, Greg Baribault, head of product at Microsoft Teams Rooms, said: “Teams Rooms for Windows v4.18 is our biggest release of the year, including four features that I think you’ll really love.”

The first of the four features to be mentioned in release notes is Cloud IntelliFrame which makes non-AI cameras smarter. This makes meeting participants in a room appear similar to remote attendees, and helps everyone pick up on facial expressions and other non-verbal cues.

In addition, IntelliFrame offers support for intelligent cameras, enabling multi-stream video, face recognition of in-room participants, active speaker recognition, attributed voice-based transcription and panoramic 180° views from front-of-room cameras and 360° views from centre-of-room cameras.

The third visual feature – unified backgrounds with video segmentation in Front Row – removes individual backgrounds, adjusts a video participant’s size and applies a uniform background to make it appear that remote participants are in the same room. This is intended to reduce distractions and make it easier for people in the room to feel connected to remote meeting participants.

Finally, spatial audio in Front Row makes it possible to use stereo speakers to make listening to remote attendees a more natural experience. Audio is played closer to the physical location of remote participants on a Front Row screen layout, to make it feel like the remote people are in the room and reduce meeting fatigue.

For more information:

• Release notes for Microsoft Teams Rooms