Using webcams with HDX USB vs HDX Realtime Webcam
The great thing about HDX USB plug-n-play is that you dont have to worry about installing drivers on your thin client, the USB stack is "virtualized" such that anything you plug into the local client gets sent to the remote VM and the remote desktop acts as if you plugged it natively. This means that the Windows desktop will take care of all the interaction with the hardware and run through the "plug-n-play" logic to find the right drivers. Here you will find that just about any webcam should work as long as the drivers exist and dont have an issue working over ICA. One downside here is that it will use quite a bit of bandwidth as you are sending video down a USB protocol… over your network.
With HDX Realtime Webcam, things work a bit different. Here the client is in charge of communicating with the webcam and then shooting only the video to the server which displays it properly. So the server doesnt deal directly with the webcam but its integrated so you get the same experience in your desktop. When you expect to see video, the HDX Realtime feature kicks in. Of course there likely some limitations on which applications work and for this you should check with Citrix but we have found that using OCS, Skype, and Tokbox work great. Another caveat here is that the client is in charge of compressing the video to save bandwidth, this compression is quite CPU intensive so you may find that using something like the new R10L may provide you the best user experience. On a unit like the C-class, you should see good results if you lower the FPS of the video to somethign like 10 or 15.. most users wont notice the difference in a video conferencing app.
What does XenApp/XenDesktop support?
Without getting into too much detail about the different way XA and XD handle USB devices below is a quick idea of what you can use where for webcams. Please check with you Citrix experts for any further questions.
XenDesktop 4: HDX USB redirection only
XenApp 6: HDX Realtime Webcam only
XenDesktop 5: Your choice.. HDX USB or HDX Realtime
Source: Webcams with ThinOS & Citrix
