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''It was a perennial technology of the future...But then out of nowhere the videophone was suddenly just here."
An extremely common trope found in any stories told in future or high-tech settings (and, to a lesser extent, spy and espionage stories), a Video Phone (Sometimes also referred to as a VidPhone) is a telecommunications device that functions exactly like a telephone but distinctly comes with a video screen which allows for the individuals on both ends of the call (and the audience) to see each other.
In some depictions, such a device may make use of an ordinary telephone receiver in order to speak to and hear the person on the other end, but most often characters usually just talk to the screen.
Like Flying Cars, Ray Guns, and, of course, Jet Packs, this is one of the most frequently observed tropes in depictions of The Future and originally popularized in the Raygun Gothic era of Science Fiction, but where most of these ubiquitous genre tropes remain absent from our reality, the Video Phone has been publicly available in one form or another since 1936; the German government ran public videophone booths prior to WWII, though these early trial services were disrupted by the war. AT&T opened the first public videophone booth in the US in 1964.
Despite this constant attention and the relative simplicity of the technology involved (Alexander Graham Bell himself talked about the possibility), lack of consumer interest kept it from going anywhere; the honest truth was that it seemed that despite all the sci-fi attention it received, the public didn't really want videophones, at least not at any significant price. They only became broadly successful in the modern era once they could be cheaply integrated into existing computer technology, and even then, many would argue they remain more of a novelty outside of the porn business.
Compare: Comm Links, for another Sci-Fi phone equivalent. See Also: Pay Phone and Phone Booth for more contemporary uses. For a breakdown on how such devices tend to operate in fiction, see Hollywood Web Cam.
Note: Given this trope's increased existence in Real Life, please refrain from listing work examples that use existing technologies in contemporary, early 21st century settings. If a work example of a Video Phone is based on an existing consumer product, please only list the product as a Real Life example, if it's not listed there already.
Examples
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Anime and Manga
- These show up almost everywhere a regular phone would in Pokémon.
- Commonly used in the original Bubblegum Crisis. Most notably, they had video payphones.
- Cowboy Bebop's in-universe equivalent to the cell phone uses video feeds on both ends of a call.
- Some were seen in Neon Genesis Evangelion.
- GhostInTheShellStandAloneComplex. Aramaki is talking via wallscreen to a contact. Although the screen shows the man in military uniform, he's actually in a bathrobe cutting his toenails.
Comics
- Commonplace in Judge Dredd and its Spin-Off stories where they're frequently called VidPhones. Models vary, sometimes having mic stands, ordinary phone receivers, or no visible microphones or speakers at all.
- Veronica of the future once got one installed, only to switch back to normal phones because her friends called while she was doing face masks or when she'd just gotten up.
- The Blake and Mortimer adventure "The Time Trap" depicts a dystopian far future in which communication takes place via camera-equipped wrist phones, for those who can afford them anyway.
- Marvel 2099 takes it to the next stage with the holo-phone. The first issue of Spider-Man 2099 opens with Miguel checking his messages:
Gabriel: Hi, Miguel, it's me.
Miguel: I know it's you, Gabe. Holo-phone, remember?
Film
Literature
Live-Action TV
- Pee-wee Herman's Picturephone on Pee-Wee's Playhouse played with the idea of "two cans on a string" found on old-fashioned playhouses/treehouses by depicting the receiver as a tin can on a telephone cord. Amusingly, in Pee-Wee's world, everyone has a Picturephone.
- In The Star Wars Holiday Special, Chewbacca's family uses one of these hidden in some kind of dresser to contact the other characters associated with the Rebel Alliance—Luke and R2-D2, Leia and C-3PO, etc.—to ask about Chewie and Han Solo's whereabouts. In a separate instance, Chewie's wife, Mala, contacts Art Carney with a device that doubles as a television which Carney's character refers to as a "wall screen."
- Max Headroom featured many video phone conversations.
- In Knight Rider, KITT is equipped with one. KI3T can use the windshield to project a multipart videoconference, to a similar effect.
- Made sporadic appearances in the second season of War of the Worlds.
- The Outer Limits episode "The Duplicate Man" had video phones with rotary dials.
- Warehouse 13 has a very Diesel Punk version, made by and named after Philo Farnsworth, one of the inventors of TV.
- Seemed commonplace in Robocop The Series.
- General Beckman's interchanges with the Chuck team mostly happen through one of these, as do liaisons between the 'Castle' and various field operatives.
- Everyone in Earth: Final Conflict has a Global, a cellphone-sized device with an ejectable touchscreen that allows face-to-face video chats. It is also a GPS and has several other functions. Pretty much a modern smartphone.
- In the various Star Trek series, the characters communicate with visual communication links as often as they use audio only. The main difference is that in like the Original Series, the crew itself typically communicates with each other with a visual element only when there is something that one of the respondents should see, such as the mysterious probe in "The Corbomite Maneuver."
- These were one of the few indications that most of the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who stories were meant to be Twenty Minutes into the Future.
Newspaper Comics
- Dick Tracy has a "2-Way Wrist TV" that carries the same function and used to communicate with police headquarters.
- One Dilbert strip involves Dilbert being the first person in the city to own a videophone. He then sits next to the phone, waiting for someone else to buy one so he can call them.
Theatre
- Alan Ayckbourn's sci-fi play Henceforward features a video phone, though it's never answered; people just leave messages.
Video Games
- Half-Life 2 features several Video Phone calls, notably between Alyx and her father. Extra points for touching the screen to emphasize the separation.
- In Dead Space, Isaac has an ultra hi-tech video phone with a projected holographic screen as part of the RIG suit's Comm Link. While the transmission is monochrome blue in Dead Space, the more advanced systems is Dead Space 2 are in full-color.
- Fun fact: the videophone's camera location is not Hand Waved like one would expect with a holographic Video Phone. In all communications, it's either on the wrist of the characters, or, more frequently, embedded into one of the nearby walls. Which means that the RIG is constantly on-line with the station/ship that Isaac is on.
- In the Science Fiction Visual Novel Bionic Heart, video phones are common. Luke is seen using a smaller version in his apartment, then a large-screened version that fills an entire room at his office.
Western Animation
- One episode of The Simpsons taking place in the future, "Lisa's Wedding," showcased a conversation between Lisa and Marge using a "picture phone." Marge kept forgetting that Lisa could see her over the phone, and her body language made it more obvious to tell when she was lying.
- Frequently seen in The Jetsons, fitting the show's Raygun Gothic aesthetic. The drawbacks are sometimes used for laughs such as the women have morning masks which are supposed to be quickly put on in case of calls coming in before they have made themselves up.
- In COPS, videophones are the norm to the point that even public phone booths have screens; they are, after all, fighting crime in a future time. And yes, cell phones pretty much don't exist.
- Videophone technology is available in Futurama; the main characters often also use cellular phones which resemble more modern phones but with built-in video.
- The title protagonists of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 1987 have "turtle communicators", which resemble flip-top cellphones, only shaped like a turtle shell, and containing a video screen and camera.
- In ReBoot, this is how most calls are made, either by opening a vidwindow or over a device like Glitch's or Dot's organizer, which includes a 'communicator' among its functions. Voice-only communication is uncommon, but does happen occasionally.
Real Life
- Most laptop computers now come with in-built webcams. Fancy-pants video streaming software turns it into a Video Phone:
- Pretty much every smartphone allows for two people with the phone to engage face-to-face calls, incorporating both the device's camera and speaker phone capabilities. Interoperability, however, is another matter*
Video calling outside of home operators is a hit-or-miss affair, as some operators do not allow video calls to leave their home network. Also, while most cellphones adhere by the ITU 3G video call specification, Apple chose to implement their own Facetime system on the iPhone instead, meaning that an iPhone can never accept video calls from 3G video-compliant phones, nor can it place direct video calls to 3G video-compliant phones. .
- Cisco Systems has produced several telecommunication devices which make long-distance face-to-face conversations possible that the company has notably been showcasing in an advertisement campaign with Ellen Page.
- CUE NET and similar devices.
- As described in The Other Wiki, the German Reichspost ran a public videophone service in 1936, though it was shut down for WWII.
- AT&T opened its first public videophone booths in the US — the Picturephone Mod I — in 1964, and was predicting a landline based/dedicated-hardware videophone as late as 1993.
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blog at Smithsonian.com
