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?"

Comments

Wigiwigi

[Verteiron]

If you can forward a port or are directly connected, try Wigiwigi. The program is flakey and very much "under development", but there is no chat app with better video quality out there, period.

http://www.wigiwigi.com/

The specific app you want is WigiHQ.

Sightspeed

[yasny_jp]

I've been using Sightspeed for quite a while now to talk with my girlfriend in Japan (I'm in the US) and I think the video quality is excellent. I haven't mesaured, but I'm pretty sure I get at least 20fps, and even if I make it full screen (on a 24'' widescreen LCD), the quality is still impressive. I'm using an iSight connected to an Intel MacMini, and my girlfriend has some generic Logitec webcam connected to her Windows laptop.

Re:Windows Media Encoder or other real time encode

[Khyber]

Also, realize that no video is going to look terribly great on a cable modem, as some have uploads as low as 128kbit. Even 'moderate' at 512mbit isn't going to be that great once you split it two ways.

That's why you don't have people pull directly from your encoder, you push your stream to a more reliable server, and let the server handle splitting the stream for many people. You may get a minute or so of delay, but that's about good enough to show off yourself. Personally I use Camfrog - more live TNA, in large group rooms, and you can always drag someone into private one-on-one chat if you're really good at charming ladies (or guys, whatever you prefer.)

Re:MSN all the way

[Donniedarkness]

Not really, as she tried to pay for them (and everything else...food, movies, anything else I buy).

Can I get a -1, Flamebait on the parent?