Last time in this series on broadband telephony, we learnt how to set up a webcam for Skype video calls across the internet. But do video phone calls cut the mustard, or is it just a gimmick?
As ever, yours truly always road tests the technology in order to gain first hand, personal experience of the subject - and Skye video beta is no exception. The toughest challenge that could be dreamt up was therefore in order. As it happened, I had the very contact with whom to put this video phone call business through its paces, Craig in Cambridge…Cambridge, New Zealand.
Contrary to what we may think, me included, there isn’t a separate Skype menu command for initiating a video call. In fact, the video detection is all done automatically, calls, both video and voice, are started by either right clicking on the contact and selecting Start call or selecting the contact and clicking the green phone button at the bottom of the window.
With an eleven hour time difference, the video conference was arranged for 10 pm BST, 9 am in New Zealand. Having first confirmed my webcam was operational by going Tools/Options/Video beta/Test webcam, I called Craig, a fellow Skyper with video, in the normal fashion. Within seconds, he answered and a box appeared on my monitor screen. A few more seconds and he was live and direct from the other side of the planet. The pixellation very rapidly disappeared and a sharp picture emerged. Considering we were separated by oceans, continents and over 12,000 miles, the synching of video and sound quality was remarkable. A smaller inset box displayed what Craig was seeing at his end.
Craig emigrated to New Zealand with his young family over a year ago and keeps in regular contact with family and grandparents via Skype, the video link bringing them all closer together and allowing relatives not to miss out on the kids growing up.
Just as easily, Craig could have been a trading partner, agent or supplier maintaining close contact with a UK company. Equally, he could have been a potential customer who had arrived on a web site and clicked the Skype ‘Call Me’ button. We simply can’t know the benefits for our business of new technology until we try these things out.
The only drawback of video calls that I can see as a remote worker is the now more pressing necessity to tidy up the office and myself. Jokes about scruffy unkempt home workers sitting at their computer in PJs - which I always felt were completely unfounded - may be coming to an end at last.
Skype, of course, is not the only way to make video calls; the same functionality is also available, for example, with MSN Messenger, Sightspeed, AOL and Yahoo Instant Messenger.
The quality of video calling is very much dependent on contention rates (the numbers of users sharing at the exchange) and bandwidth. In a residential setting, for instance, the typical contention ratio for broadband bandwidth is 50:1 whereas for most business users the contention ratio is likely to be 20:1 or even as low as 5:1.
This is something to bear in mind if experiencing slow/poor connectivity. Generally, though, the lower the video resolution, the better the performance. Check your web cam properties and lower the resolution to improve performance. Remember, too, that ADSL broadband has a slower upload than download speed, so this would naturally place a choke on video quality.
Useful links
Skype
Voice over IP – getting started guide #1
Voice over IP – getting started guide #2
