Solved H.264 Support Feature Request Rejected

[lukekenny]

Just noticed the feature request thread for H.264 support for the Android & iOS apps has been changed from In-Progress to Rejected and the thread locked.

This is disappointing, especially given CTO Nick Galea posted in 2019 that this feature, required for viewing the video stream from modern door phones, was coming and to watch the blog.

Other SIP clients for Android & iOS already support this, and I would have thought it would be a no brainer for 3CX.

This is a classic use case for 3CX, app and video door bell. The office is closed or unattended, someone comes to the door, presses the button, and the mobile rings where ever they are and can speak to the person at the door. Being able to see them has an obvious advantage.

The situation as it stands leaves three choices, none good: deploy a second third-party SIP app, use something like Nest, or change to another PBX platform.

If it's a money or licensing problem, I am certain there is a market for an in-app paid H.264 upgrade to cover the cost. Lot's of SIP apps do that, especially for things like G.729 codec support. Surely Android & iOS devices have hardware decode and encode of H.264. H.264 already works well between two devices that support it, such as between two Yealink T58A's.

Does anyone have any insight into 3CX's decision here?

 

[nobody]

I do not have an insight, but I also regret the decision to drop the development of h264.

 

[cobaltit]

Well 3CX is in the business of making money, and working on ideas with a lot of push behind them. I imagine H.264 just didn't have much momentum. Personally, any customer that had any real usage for this scenario did a full intercom system which will have it's own app. I imagine that's why it was marked as rejected so people don't wait for something that's not going to happen. And if you are willing to change PBX systems for this lack of integration, well chances are you aren't making 3CX any money anyways.

 

[N_G]

@cobaltit Thank you for the heads up.

H264 video can be streamed onto the Web client or Chrome extension no problem. Just not to the iOS or Android app. These are licensed for H264. Our apps are not because licensing cost is prohibitive and with our number of extensions would push up the license price by 20 to 30%.

 

[lukekenny]

@Nick Galea great to hear you're in talks with MPEG LA.

I'd be interested on hearing your thoughts as to offering this as a paid add on, using the in-app upgrade functionality offered by the app stores.

 

[nobody]

The MPEG LA permits sessions up to 12minutes without paying a license fee even for commercial use. Regarding door phones this would be more then needed - if this is applicable for this usage that would be an option (but I am no laywer, nor have I ever dealt with the MPEG LA).

 

[NoFate]

damn , i have just setup 3CX for ly door intercom, and now i see h264 is not supported in android client?

can we use another SIP client like Linphone to make use of H264 ?

 

[3CXfan]

damn , i have just setup 3CX for ly door intercom, and now i see h264 is not supported in android client?

can we use another SIP client like Linphone to make use of H264 ?

Hi @NoFate same situation, it seems at this point, getting H264 on 3CX is a dead-end.

I have also been advised to try Linphone to have H264 video call on mobile app but it seems to require a "SIP Account" and I can't seem to just associate the app to my 3CX account as one of its clients.

There is no documentation on 3CX anywhere about how to use 3rd party app to get H264 running,

I know it's none of 3CX's business, but I think at least 3CX should create this guide since they don't want to support H264 on their own app.

Unless they are secretly developing this support behind the scenes so they don't want to lose clients to those external apps for now. What is really going on?!

 

[NoFate]

I have linphone setup and working now with n extension, i used the username and password from the sip extension

Not tried video yet,i am struggling with an register issue with another device :-(

 

[3CXfan]

That's good news @NoFate

May I ask where you get the username and password for "SIP extension"?

Is it the Username (extension) and Password in Extensions > Ext # > General > Web Authentication?

 

[NoFate]

No , on that 4th tab on the extension i believe, that "phone .." tab, there you can also define username and password... It's not the web authentication

 

[3CXfan]

Hmm, I keep getting "provisioning load error" on Linphone using the info from "Phone Provisioning" tab.

Even after reading this closed 3CX thread where they mention STUN, SBC or VPN are required for external unsupported apps, there is still no conclusino that any of these methods would work properly

@NoFate Looking forward to hearing good news from you when you figure it out

 

[NoFate]

Well, i can connect my linphone just fine...
I am struggling with my intercom to register as sip, always bad registration ... Looking for to disable sip auth by user ID or something like that

 

[SAS IT Dept]

It maybe worth noting on the door phone documentation pages that although the speech part is compatible with 3CX, video is not compatible with all clients. Save confusion and annoyance.