Are Videophones Ready for Prime Time? 49
Amigan asks: "Looking for a gift for my parents who live 1500+ miles away, I came across the Vialta Beamer TV. This device, with its claimed ease of use, would be helpful for my parents to see my son via the phone, but I'm wondering if the glowing WSJ review or Tech TV review are for real. Is 4-15 fps viable for conversation?"
What's the point? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What's the point? (Score:2)
Re:What's the point? (Score:2, Interesting)
However, she already had the hardware, and was willing to try setting it up.
My dad, on the other hand, won't touch a computer. If the parents in question are like him, then a videophone is probably a better option.
Re:What's the point? (Score:1)
30fps would probably be better (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:30fps would probably be better (Score:2)
Re:30fps would probably be better (Score:2)
Re:30fps would probably be better (Score:2)
I never said you'd get 30FPS with a 56k modem, I just said that iChatAV will work with a 56k modem, without specifying anything else like frame rates. The other guy said broadband is REQUIRED. It is not.
Re:30FPS are you kidding!!!!! (Score:3, Informative)
Regular ol' television (NTSC) is only 30 frames per second so if they get to see the grandkid in real time at the same quality they'd get if they were watching him\her on VHS it would probably be quite acceptable.
Yes, but (Score:1, Offtopic)
WAH!
No personally I love gadgets but I wouldnt want to subject any of my friends and family to my pasty white face. If I ever have a dire need I can use a webcam but I think it is too 'gimmiky'.
Polycom ViaVideo II (Score:3, Insightful)
or else it'll be a blur.
However we use it to talk coast-to-coast. On
university-to-university network you get ~20 fps
and the quality degradation is notable. Now you
get a picture that is a bit retarded and when
someone moves (even medium speed) it results in
unhappiness.
Put the sucker on cable modem and you get 10 fps.
Now it is virtually unusable in the sense that you
are not getting much more than voice and what you
do get is painfully choppy and often artefacted.
IMHO, anything below 15 fps is not even worth
consideration.
Re:Polycom ViaVideo II (Score:2)
The polycom, in my opinion, sucks.
Drops the connection all the time, blurs, voice cuts out. It just sucks.
Frame rate needs to be 16 ... (Score:3, Insightful)
Thats why the old fashioned 8mm movies [pacbell.net] were (usually) shot at that speed.
CC.
iChat (Score:3, Interesting)
Add me to the iChat chorus (Score:3, Informative)
You do, of course, need a Mac though.
[Additional agreement is not redundant, damn it!]
video is a hassle (Score:4, Funny)
Re:video is a hassle (Score:5, Funny)
Re:video is a hassle (Score:1)
"VoIP smell-o-vision phones hit the market"
That's the day I'm scared of
Re:video is a hassle (Score:4, Interesting)
We tried this a work a while back and it turns out that most people will not turn it on.
They don't want to see or be seen. It also got rid of the travel, meaning free lunch & time away from your desk.
It might be wise to try and find out if would actually be used before plunking down the cash.
Is 4-15 fps viable? (Score:4, Interesting)
For a quick, kind of dirty solution the Beamer product looks to be adequate but, again, it's not going to feel like face to face.
If you're looking for something with higher quality, there are standalone units that work over IP. The obvious advantage is broadband speed allowing much nicer frame rates (as several people have described with the Mac iChat system) and they don't require a PC (though some ISPs require PCs to set up broadband service). The disadvantages are setup (might be tough to talk a non-techie through it) and broadband cost (of course, this is cancelled out with frequent use because of long-distance savings).
D-Link has two TV-connecting IP videophone models, both wireless [dlink.com] and wireful [dlink.com] (the latter goes for $149.95 after $50 mail-in rebate at Amazon).
In Belgium (Score:2, Interesting)
It looks to be very easy in use.
Wireless Video Phones (Score:2, Interesting)
Promos during football season (Score:2)
They feature a mini-ad where the commentators in the booths show off their phones on air during the slow times on the field.
So far, they haven't been able to get them to work, the best they could do was call the other person, while on the air.
This says volumes about these phones, and the average user. I would guess that the majority of the advanced features go unused, and it is used just as a phone.
14 fps. (Score:4, Insightful)
Movies are 24 FPS.
TV is 30 FPS (NTSC) or 25 FPS (PAL). (frames per second, not fields per second).
The "killer app" for video phones is not business conferencing - it is "Look at Grandma! Wave to Grandma!".
And we USED to use postcards (1 frame per WEEK) for that.
Re:14 fps. (Score:1)
Not to mention the horrible Ping times of snail-mail.
15 fps adequate for some things (Score:5, Interesting)
Several years ago I helped run some informal studies of people using small-frame video over IP for real-time communications. IIRC, some of the useful things that we learned were:
Re:15 fps adequate for some things (Score:2)
Re:15 fps adequate for some things (Score:3, Interesting)
If I understand the question correctly, the answer is no. If someone waves their hand rapidly -- little Johnny to Grandma, for example -- at 15 fps Grandma will clearly see and understand the wave, but there's no visible blurring. I'm not sure what frame rate is needed to get visible blurring -- higher than we could generate with the hardware, software, and network arrangements we were testing at the time.
It might be w
Re: (Score:1)
Re:15 fps adequate for some things (Score:2)
Camera blur certainly occurs, but with modern sensors and under reasonable lighting conditions, is much less common than it used to be. For example, the frame-by-frame slow-motion shown during sporting events (from regular video, not from the "super slo-mo" high-frame-rate cameras that are sometimes used) is much sharper than it was in the past. OTOH, if you hold your hand palm-out at arm's l
IMHO, its less about the tech than privacy. (Score:1)
Right now, people take it for granted that they have some privacy when answering the phone. You don't need to check what you look like, whe
Re:IMHO, its less about the tech than privacy. (Score:1)
Vialta Beamer TV (Score:1)
Before he went out and set it up for his mother and sister, we tried it at work. We connected Beamer units to phone lines in our offices, as far as I can tell, it works very nicely. At least he is very happy about that. I don't ever remember him complaining about the frame rate.
We looked at D-Link units as well, but where his mother lives, there is no
Closed vs open standards (Score:3, Insightful)
Or you could use a webcam and open standards, and be able to chat with any other PC/Mac users with a webcam
Reminds me of the first Soviet company to get a FAX machine. They were quite proud of themselves, until they realized they didn't have anyone else to call.
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iChat one way video conference (Score:1)
Re:iChat one way video conference (Score:1)
I have found most webcams support one way video chat:
Yes, it is ready (Score:2)