[thelist] quick videoconferencing solution

[Mark Groen]

On 5 Mar 2002 at 12:10, JCanfield at magisnetworks.com wrote:

> Need a
> quick and simple videoconferencing solution

I haven't found one that really works well all the time and is inexpensive to
boot. Latest trial was eyeball chat, worked about as well as this article's trial:
http://www.infoworld.com/articles/tc/xml/01/03/12/010312tceyeball.xml

> Fast PCs with fast internet connections on both ends; both ends in the
> continental US.

Doesn't matter, you can't control the connections in between unless you
spend some major $. This is where most of the problems are for me, ever do
a trace route? Both the video and audio packets have to arrive at about the
same time; tricky, and real life on the www tends to thwart this.

> Would an out-of-the-box PC camera on both ends, using NetMeeting, do a
> passable job? Is there a better alternative?

PC cameras are generally not high quality images, real video conferencing
uses much higher end cameras and other hardware.
Netmeeting basically sucks in my book, managed to connect with my brother
in California a total of once out of many tries over a few months through the
winter.

> Thanks, gang.

Maybe someone can come up with something that actually works when you
want it to, would love to find an app that does it without having dedicated
networks. Anyone?
Meantime, unless someone comes up with something else you may want to
save face and do it the old fashioned way for now.
Here's a couple links for solutions that *do* work, but you are looking at
spending some very large $.

http://www.vc4less.com/naproductPictureTelSS2overview.asp
http://www.tek7.com/tekgizmo.htm
http://www.ralstoninc.com/ralston/solutions/t1000.htmhttp://www.brinckmann.
com/solutions/solutions.htm

HTH!

	Mark Groen


MG Web Services
Web Site Hosting and Development
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