Videoconferencing, anyone?

[Les Posen]

On Friday, August 1, 2003, at 10:40  AM, Tarik Bilgin wrote:

>
> Well,
> I visited the local Apple centre in Leeds this morning, and we did a
> video chat using an iSight connected to an iMac G4 800 connecting to
> identical kit in their Nottingham store.
>
> The iSight is very nice. The auto focus works well, the CCD resolution
> is not professional quality, but seems good enough for most 1 to 1
> situations.
>
> The way iChat AV adjusts its settings automatically based on bandwidth
> is very nice, and the connections seem very stable.
>
> We had 20 fps on standard 512/256 kB ADSL connections, and we had a
> bitrate of 138bps.
>
> My conclusion:
>
> For the price this is great, and the set up is a no brainer. (If you
> have a firewall you will need to open some custom UDP ports though)
>
>



I want to chime in and say that a friend who has an ADSL connection and  
an iBook 900 couldn't communicate with me due to firewall issues,  
despite the supposed ability of iChat/iSight to overide these  
restrictions.

Her network is based around a Draytek wireless ADSL modem router, which  
BTW is excellent value at around AUD 360. Considering the Airport is  
about AUD399 it's good value, since it comes with 4-ports and Mac OS  
X/9 software.

Draytek now has acknowledged the existence of iChat, and has included  
on its homepage the appropriate settings for file and audio/visual  
transmission, and using the same page, I was able to get Timbuktu up  
and running also.

Just Google "Draytek iChat" to see for yourself - the knowledge may be  
transferrable to other setups.

Les
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