Recently, someone forward this article on PC Magazine on real-world testing of the various video chat tools. I am amazed by the quality of testing (or lack there of) done by this publisher. This was such a marketing baloney - that it was not even funny! It further bolsters my belief that these casual video chat tools have yet to evolve to deliver to the real-time video experience.
I tried their best rated tool - SightSpeed...and in my humble opinion it SUCKED!! While reading through the PCMag article the following caught my attention: "SightSpeed worked pretty well, though we saw several "network congestion" errors, and dropped frames were fairly common, too. That's Comcast's service, however, not SightSpeed. " Now...now....since when does a reviewer make excuses for the tool and point the finger to someone else for not being able to deliver a high quality experience. Shouldn't SightSpeed be able to adapt to the changing network conditions? It is always easy to blame the ISP or Internet in general for providing a degraded quality of experience.
This theme seemed to follow everywhere in the review. For Skype it mentions "the quality of the video wasn't ideal, and there was some lag time in the transmission of the video signal, but this is to be expected when calling overseas, where broadband quality and Internet connections can be spotty."
I expect better from reviewers!
Oct 3, 2006
PC Magazine review of Video Chat tools
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1 comment:
I can understand where you're coming from. However, think about this:
The regular Joe doesn't have internet speeds that equal broadcast, but I talk to a lot of customers who somehow have not factored that in. The reviewers likely realize there are many who will be going into this expecting such, and trying to bring them back down to earth to realize that.
Of course, when home users have internet upload/download speeds (and reliability) that rival TV broadcasts, the point will be moot. Currently we can still give a decent performance with as low as 80kbps, but due to the low bandwidth, the video will suck. However, at 380kbps and above, the video is pretty sweet.
So your SightSpeed experience blew, eh? I might be able to give you some tips. Email me sightspeed at gmail dot com.
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