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Are Videophones Ready for Prime Time?

Posted by Cliff on from the talking-at-12-frames-per-second dept.

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?"

6 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. What's the point? by floamy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why not just buy a webcam and do it online? With two good connections you're probably looking at a bettter framerate.

  2. 30fps would probably be better by sakusha · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I read an interesting report (SF Chron I think) that said deaf users discovered that Apple's iChat has a sufficiently high frame rate and resolution to use sign language over video, and no other products had a high enough frame rate to do the job adequately. But then, AFAIK iChat and the iSight does 30fps. I suspect this doesn't directly apply to you, but I though you might find it interesting as some sort of benchmark.

  3. video is a hassle by oskillator · · Score: 4, Funny

    Personally, I like being able to answer the phone without shaving, getting dressed, and combing my hair first.

    1. Re:video is a hassle by pyrote · · Score: 5, Funny

      considering a good 90% of slashdotters goto work under those conditions, I doubt this is a concern :)

      --
      THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
    2. Re:video is a hassle by kachuik · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually a good point.

      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.

  4. 15 fps adequate for some things by michael_cain · · Score: 4, 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:

    • People who watch 15 fps video on a regular basis rate it higher than people who hardly ever watch low-frame-rate video. 15 fps is clearly not as smooth as 24 or 30 fps, but people do get used to it.

    • At 15 fps, body language and hand gestures are easily understood. For desktop conferencing, people tended to use the video as a body-language signaling channel -- I'm bored, I'm excited, I need to say something now.

    • At 15 fps, you can tell whether the audio and video are properly synced by watching people's mouths -- at 10-12 fps the motion is too jerky to tell.

    • At 15 fps, out-of-sync audio and video will drive you crazy -- many people have to look away so they can't see the video in order to continue the conversation.

    • A black-and-white option can be useful. A black-and-white frame typically requires only about half as many bits as a color frame, so you can trade off color for fps. Some people preferred black-and-white at higher frame rates, some people preferred color at lower rates.