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Group Video Conferencing?

Posted by Cliff on from the three's-a-meeting dept.

darhaw asks: "What started out as a simple request has turned into a big deal. I work for a small firm with partners in 4 different cities, and we'd like to do weekly video conferences. There seem to be many different 2 PERSON video conferencing products -- but there are very few GROUP video conferencing products. Is there anything out there? Any help I can get would be greatly appreciated."

3 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. iChat, supports up to 4 by danpat · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://www.apple.com/au/macosx/features/ichat/

    Bandwidth will become a bit of an issue, as you need to serve your stream out to everyone involved, as well as downloading theirs.

    1. Re:iChat, supports up to 4 by foniksonik · · Score: 3, Informative

      Specifically it's iChat Video... and it requires that all machines be at least 1Ghz G4... and the host machine be a G5

      So you could get 3 Mac Minis, 3 isights and a new iMac w/ integrated iSight and be good to go...

      --
      A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
  2. Why iChat is better by feijai · · Score: 3, Informative

    I had to go through exactly this to do conferences with places like Paris and San Diego (I'm on the east coast) with DARPA funding agents etc. The video had to be good, and the audio had to be good. We tried all sorts of PC-to-PC options and PC-to-Mac options, pretty much everything that could be done for under $200. And iChat (using iSights) was better than all of them by far. The video was clean and fast, the audio was excellent. Eventually my DARPA program manager broke down and just bought an iBook, and is glad he did it.

    Apple has done a really, *really* good job. Don't fool around with crap like NetMeeting and H.263. Do it right.

    Now, if you're willing to put in some serious $$$, there are other options with higher fidelity still. One of the big problems with iChat is that its resolution -- good as it is -- isn't good enough to read Powerpoint slides off the screen. There ought to be some mechanism by which everyone can see PowerPoint or Keynote being broadcast in real-time.