Video Chat -- Who Has the Best Quality Picture?

Milo_Mindbender asks: "There are lot of PC based video chat programs out there now, but every one I've tried lately seems to have pretty low-quality video even when both participants have cable-modem and high quality USB2 or Firewire cameras. The recent 'Windows Live' update was advertising better quality video, but it doesn't look any better to me. Now, I'm asking the Slashdot crowd: of the programs you've tried which ones have the best quality video? I'm mainly interested in low-cost or free Windows PC solutions, but for the benefit of all the readers maybe we could come up with 'best Windows', 'best Mac' and 'best Linux' recommendations?"

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Answered in the question

[Sigma 7]

"There are lot of PC based video chat programs out there now, but every one I've tried lately seems to have pretty low-quality video even when both participants have cable-modem and high quality USB2 or Firewire cameras.

Cable modem? That's why.

Let's assume that you are have a 300kbps upload rate (which is on the low side for cable, but will do.) You are also dealing with a video compression codec that needs to be real-time (i.e. low-compression). In some cases, you have more than one person in the video chat, either requiring a multicast or multiple connections.

In addition, you are not wanting to fill that entire 300kbps - that would choke the connection and cause issues if you happen to be on a slow period (or otherwise slow down the connection for other things.) Effectivly, you have a 128kbps bitrate, possibly 64kbps.

While that bitrate can provide acceptable movie quality, it flings you into "low-quality" world. Unless this is the exact bitrate you are looking for (i.e. this is "high-quality" video conferencing), you'll have to deal with the image quality that you've got. Alternativly, get a fibre-optic conneftion so that you can have an ultra-high bitrate.