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The Other VoIP
JamesB writes "Voxilla reports that two major Voice-over-IP providers, VoicePulse and Vonage have announced plans for Video-over-IP. Their competitor Packet8 has already been offering this service for several months."
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select what channel you want to watch over TCP!!
Is this like a fancy version of Netmeeting? Wasn't that released in Win98?
Using iChatAV for some time now, the only trouble is sometimes you don't want to SEE who you're talking to, and you don't want them to see you (if you're sick, or too lazy to put on a shirt). A funny thing I've found is a question of etiquette; when is it polite to cover the cam?
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
Does anyone here get VOIP Spam yet? Have telemarketers started pissing on this communication medium yet?
I know what's on your hard dr
And theirs will be what, A Ferrari with a naked woman lying on it? No, probably a phone with a camera slapped on it.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Article from October.
"Powers. I have them."
I'm not sure of how many months were meant by several, but packet8 had it whenever i started service with them. And if i remember right that was back in January.
From wired 1995:
:)
SGI's Challenge XL server will be used for the Time Warner Cable trial in Orlando, Florida, which was scheduled to begin late in 1994 and will service a total of 4,000 homes. Customers will have a powerful set-top box, built by SGI and Scientific-Atlanta.
Never quite worked, though
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
I've started to notice the bandwidth w/ my Time Warner cable modem starting to wane. They now offer a "premium" package...makes me wonder if they're throttling back on the bandwidth for us "basic" users, making paying $20+ more a month more attractive. Where's all this new bandwidth for Video going to come from now? People in my neighborhood will be going "what's going on? Oh nothing much..." in full streaming video while I won't be able make a g**dm phone call now!?
Currently bidding on sig
Video-Over-IP phone over FTTH is ready in Japan. If you're living in Japan, you can see TV CM everyday.
http://www.fletsphone.com/products/index.html
From Tokyo, Japan
Packet8 gets massive free advertising, and the site is "down for maintenance". Did they get /.ed ? Or is this just a biz blunder ?
> Never quite worked, though :)
It worked fine. It was just too expensive. They were never able to cost reduce their expensive set tops. Duh.
What kind of bandwidth are we talking about here? The video stream will almost certainly dwarf the voice.
Is one low-quality frame every 1/4 second (Subserviant Chicken!) or something that actually WOULD make you feel like you're talking to an actual person? And, if the latter, how do they get the upstream bandwidth to pull it off--most DSL providers are notoriously slow on upstream speed, and that would be the limiting factor here.
The idea is great, the technology is there but it's going to take a social shift for people to start using video phones. Until then they will be a novelty...
I work from home a lot... I can just picture myself using a video phone in the morning when I'm still weraing my sweats and I haven't showered or shaved. Yeah right...
Calling George Jettson!
Finally, the things I've lived so long waiting to see are becoming reality!
Now, if we just had those flying cars....
HexaByte - he's a square and a half!
I had Voice Pulse for 6 months and the drop outs just became too much. They also have an extremely loud high pitched noise that blows your ear out once in a while.
I switched to packet8 about 2 months ago and it has been great. Big improvement. And my plan costs $20/month instead of $35+.
Earlier in the year, VP wasn't so bad. My guess is they are badly oversubscribed.
Nope, don't think so. Let me explain why.
I'd love VOIP and this service IF it was available here in SW VA. I admit, though, that I'd want someone else to try it first. Personally, I'm still waiting on HDTV to be easily and commonly available and for the TVs to become cheap.
You know, if I'm typical of the average ruralish consumer, this will never make it here. There'll be no incentive for these companies to come here!
I hope I'm wrong though. I do have DSL, so maybe I'm wrong.
Just like damn 3G video phones it's a tech in search of an application.
Why would i want people to see me when I've just dragged myself out of bed to ring in sick - and if I hide the video- won't they think I'm in bermuda or something enjoying the sun?!?!
My Portfolio
Has anyone seen what the Italian ex-monopolist (Telecom Italia) is selling?
The videotelefono (or videophone for those who don't know Dante's language) plugs into a normal jack and gives the user the "video" option (of course if the person you're talking to has the same... apparatus).
Pretty cool, at 6Eurocents per minute (approx 4.5cents US)!
Look, I know that some geeks will think that this is cool. But, speaking as a geek, I doubt that even a significant portion of the geek population will go for this.
NOBODY WILL BUY THIS. Nobody wants a friggin' video-phone, and particularly not for 500 bucks, when they can get the same amusement from NetMeeting and a $20 webcam.
Voice over IP is a good idea because it uses the existing telephones. Videophones... forget it. This is a publicity stunt to raise awareness of their brand of voice over IP.
Never attribute to malice that which can be explained by mere idiocy.
Vonage's network barely works right now - and has been less stable in the past few months than any time in the past year I've subscribed. What we really need is mobile access from our smartphones. There's a crappy beta available for WiFi Windows smartphones, but battery life, audio quality and other limitations of that platform make it more a curiosity than a tool. The Treo is much better suited to this application, maybe using Bluetooth to connect to an accesspoint, or to a pocket AP, or even over the bursty WCDMA. Once wireless roaming (among APs as easily as among cells) is rolled out, the cheap economics of distributed networking will make VoIP the clear successor to old telco service, with cost and feature improvements that appeal to a century of pent-up demand.
Video over IP makes for flashy investor demos - I've enjoyed unleashing them, myself. But the basic reliability of the network is most important in winning masses of customers, which is most important to sustaining the service. While Vonage is flirting with dreamworld, a competing VoIP network could steal their business by just providing basic service, without gaps in conversations or use scenarios. When it works, sign me up - I'll spend my cable bill money on phone service instead.
--
make install -not war
If you have Windows, you have NetMeeting (conf.exe). If you have Linux, you probably have gnomemeeting. Even if you downloaded something like Yahoo Instant Messenger, you have a slightly easier to use video and audio conferencing package for Mac or PC. All are based on the same standards. What is it that pay services like Skype or Vonage provide that these services don't?
The only added value of Vonage seems to be a connection to the plain old telephone system (POTS) so that you can contact people in the largest network in the world (POTS). As soon as we find way to make this free in most of the world, these services are dead.
The only value that Skype seems to add is security [both easy-to-use, standard 256-bit AES encryption and lack of centralized server (P2P instead)]. But I think these will become standardized too very shortly.
So the only quesitons are, how long do we have to wait for free, standard access to POTS, and for standardized security (encryption and lack of central authority)?
Anyone remember CuSeeMe? Postage-stamp video-phone calls (without audio) over 14.4k dialup back in '94 or so.
Once DSL arrived, medium-quality full-motion video was "only a matter of time." I don't know if "TV-quality" is doable over your typical 3-4Mbps cable connection but if not, this will soon be a non-issue.
By the way, one of the major stumbling blocks to video, and audio to a lesser degree, is quality-of-service. Large chunks of the Internet don't handle this very well, but that is improving.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
does that mean that they'll have to pay Apple's licensing fees for every phone they sell?
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
for a long time now. first we used netmeeting types on the pc but the size are real small and the motion is jerky. so now we are using either D-Link I-2-Eye (www.i-2-eye.com) or Sorenson, a pioneer in this field, (www.sorensonvrs.com). It has spread around the community like wildfire - I would estimate between 5,000 to 10,000 have one already. Basically its set on top of a tv but the quality is great as we get around 25 to 30 fps, we can call relay services (real interpreters) to call hearing individuals using sign language. And we can call point to point to chat up with old friends or keep in touch with new friends. I am sure in the future this technology will be built in tv sets and connected wirelessly to the router and thus to the internet. I think this has better future than these tiny screens on phones because you can see bigger sizes - as big as the tv allows. just my take. han solo
AKA Pay Per View - which is HIGHLY successfull and RAPIDLY exploding market. (Making cable companies millions)
:)
Sure, its taken 9-10 more years to become standard but its here
What benefit will this add? Doesnt it seem like they are doing it for the sake of doing it, not cause it adds any value? I hope that this does not fail and force them to jack up the price of there current and very useful service in order to cover the cost.
If it becomes standard ten years later I'm sure cordless phones will remain quite camera free.
Working at RadioShack there are still a ton of people who buy cordless phones without caller ID support.
I for one will never buy a webcam (wtf is the point?)
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
We have that already, we have television over IP via ADSL, television and free phone comunication, two major ISP offer them, free and france telecom, with free you have over 99 channels to choose from, also there are certain channels available only on the pay per view basis (mostly movies and X stuff).
What is really cool is that whenever you get a new message on your phone answering machine and you are watching your TV there is a message on the TV screen that tells you so, also an audio file is sended to your email too.
So are we finally ahead of what is being done on the new world? just like we are on mobile phones (siemens, ericsson, nokia).
I've been using camfrog pro for a while, with very stable communications across the planet by using a simple Merlin Wireless Internet card and a small webcam. Check it out
Now the hardware can be purchased relatively cheap aswell.
a tI ds=,&webid=591137&affixedcode=WW
http://www.staples.ca/ENG/Catalog/cat_sku.asp?C
Business Depot provides a rebate through Vontage so the hardware only costs you 15 bucks in the end if you sign up with Vontage.
"Imagination is the only weapon in the war against reality." -Jules de Gautier
Apple doesn't own H.264. Apple didn't invent H.264.
... not VoIP. Can I set up my firewall to block commercials?
bcbv
I work from home most of the time. Many days I don't really get cleaned up before sitting down to work. The phone is nice because the customer can't see that I am still wearing the pair of baggies that I went surfing in that morning.
Video phones would seriously screw up my life.
What I need is imaging software that will modify the image in real time to make me look respectable. I can imagine a list of preference with check boxes for add shirt, add tie, remove the bags from under my eyes because I was out drinking last night.
We had a couple of SGI's with the cute little cameras on top back in the mid-90's. Everyone thought that video-conferencing was going to be this huge new thing. Well, come to find out that video conferencing was just not something most people wanted. Who wants your grandmother to be able to see you pick your nose?
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
I have BOTH Vonage (personal) and Voicepulse (biz lines). They need to fix/tweak a few things, really little things:
.WAV files. Yes, we have broadband, but we don't like downloading huge files, folks.
* Use a rational codec for voicemail attachments that are sent out - NOT raw
* FAX FAX FAX. They really need to bust out some kind of T.38 bridge for their customers. Faxing just doesn't work - which means at least some bucks for Verizon.
* Do for calls what we do for email! C'mon, we're talking about bits now. Why can't I selectively block calls? Have multiple outgoing messages for different callers? Filtering on caller ID (ok, Voicepulse has some crappy attempts at this).
Forget video. No one really wants this - see: "Failure of Videophones that work on POTS lines".
JH
Hurray for phone sex...
eTrade SUCKS
As you may recall, the 1960s Bell PicturePhone bombed because nobody wanted to be seen after they got out of the shower to anser the telephone. People keep reinventing technology that nobody wants. Dumb!!!
We have 3 ISP providing TV over ADSL.e .php?fh=3&fg=-&cf=A/vf/tel_maison/pages_statiques/ malignetv/index.shtml&cp=Home_ttADSL_tvADSL) using the LiveBOX. Also provide visiophony (http://www.francetelecom.com/fr/groupe/orga_activ ites/services/visiophonie/index.html)
- Free (http://adsl.free.fr) using the FreeBOX (that also provides free phone over IP) => http://adsl.free.fr/tv/
- 9 Telecom (http://www.neuf.fr/offres/adsl/) using the 9BOX+TV_reciever => http://www.neuf.fr/offres/tv/
- France Telecom (http://www.agence.francetelecom.com/vf/navs/fram
When bandwidth is greater than 3.5 Mb/s, the image quality is quite nice. at 5Mb/s image quality is near perfect (no freeze). It then only depends on the compression level at the source. We also have new ADSL2+ that provides bandwith up to 25Mb/s (more often 15Mb/s). HDTV should be available some days on these connections.
PS: sorry links are in French as they advertise for french stuffs.
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olahaye74
Video over IP has been reality for years, with its more commonly used name, "pr0n."
My parents live three states away. I'd love for my grandkids to be able to see them on a regular basis like that. Or talk to friends like this. Or talk to that "special someone".
Video phones for the average consumer have been around in one form or another for fifteen or twenty years. I don't think the problem is the demand for the service. The problems are a cascade effect:
1) Cost-prohibitive: $500 for a friggen phone?!? Better figure on buying two, because I can guarantee that whoever you're going to want to talk to isn't going to want to shell out five big ones for a phone. This technology has always been and continues to be, priced for the early EARLY adopters.
2) Slow adoption rate: You finally decide to break down and buy one, but who are you going to talk to? Nobody. So fuhgeddaboutit. Cost is high, so adoption is slow.
3) Changing technology: Like I said, this technology has been available commercially for almost two decades; if you forked over hundreds of dollars years ago, what can you do with your investment today? Nothing. Toss that phone and put another $500 on the AMEX. The adoption rate is so slow and the technological progress so fast that the phones you buy today, like your computers, will be obsolete in a couple of years (unlike the POTS phone that I've been using for 15+ years). Then again, maybe it's a good thing that the adoption rate is so slow right now, allowing the technology to mature before it really goes mainstream.
I'll also toss this in... who wants to stare at a tiny LCD screen while they talk on the phone? We've been liberated by cordless phones; I like to move around while I talk. A smarter move would be to integrate this technology into the television. A nice big screen that everyone can see and with the camera mounted on top, you're still free to move about the room. Maybe this is what Vonage is thinking, too. I hope so.
The demand is there for video phones, though. They just need to cut the price to under $200, and then they'll see the floodgates open.
Who in their right mind would pay $500+ for a lousy screen phone? Just buy a regular PC. Even a $500 PC has 10x the power of those junk embedded screen phone devices!
Besides, NetMeeting and GnomeMeeting have been around for years and are free to use!
Idiots!
Actually, I HAD one of those boxes (Holy crap, I had no idea only 4,000 'em were out there)...
It was a cool thing. Granted, the Video on Demand wasn't that reliable (Every once in a while, it stuttered while the data caught back up, and once the server crashed while watching a movie), but I still loved the damn thing...
The best part was there were online games offered on them which you could play with the remote. There was this mech-warrior game that was rather fun. Oh, and the free archive of Monty Python's Flying Circus, that was brilliant. Were it not for that box, I still probably would not have seen such brilliant sketches as the Dead Parrot, The Funniest Joke in the World, and the Spam sketch...
Man, good times... good times...
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living."
- Seneca
Did you see the new cisco phone? 7920 wireless pretty nice. use your access point , then when you walk out of your house , use the att network or mci or whatever..
s 37 9/products_data_sheet09186a00801739bb.html
n fo
http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/phones/p
dave
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/voipi
I've recently moved from Australia to France. There they have a system they call ADSL2 that delivers 15 Mbits/s over standard telephone lines, and the first provider (www.free.fr) delivers video over IP for free over this. You get all the free-to-air channels plus some. You just plug your TV on the router they provide (for free) and off you go. There is no configuration.
This is for 30 Euros/month (US$40 approx). Oh and it does free voice over IP too. Last time I was in France they still had this 1980's era minitel, but things have changed a bit since in the last couple of years.
For that price in Australia you can't even get 512 kbits/s.
What's the situation in the US? At least in big cities there should be some comparable offerings, no?
Is there any way to get faxes that are sent to your Voicepulse Connect number? Or are they sent over your landline?
"Avoid employing unlucky people - throw half of the pile of CVs in the bin without reading them." -- David Brent