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A Full-Time 2-Way Video Link To Grandparents?
uid7306m writes "We have elderly parents who live a long way off. However, my technological radar tells me that it's possible to set up a 24/7 video link between our kitchen and theirs. It'd be good for our kids and good for the parents, and we can now get pretty cheap nearly unlimited broadband connections at this end (UK). What's the best way to do it? Has anyone tried it? On the far end, it ought to have, in Dilbert's(TM) immortal words 'One big button on it, and we push it for you in the factory.'"
... but that might be too complicated.
I could see some advantages of streaming both ways to large flat panels. I think it would be a bit intrusive, though, because as much as I love my parents I'm very glad there is a 10 hour distance between us.
If all else fails you could just do a webcast. While interestingly linked, I just can't get into the concept too much for fear that one day I might see my mother in law staring back at us ;)
Isn't there a way to only stream frames if they are changing? I would have thought that's how it's done now anyway - so that only useful, changing data is transmitted. When both kitchens are empty, the video stream isn't sending any data.
Umm haven't you heard? You only get that if you dont use it.
Start doing 24/7 video and you will find your connection throttled, or gone.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why not just rename "Ask Slashdot" to "Someone Fucking Think For Me"?
Seriously. Whatever happened to the days of "Hey, I wanted to do 'x', and so, here's how I did it - because I'm a nerd"?
Whatever happened to the days when questions were prefaced with "I wanted to accomplish , and HERE is what I've done so far to do so - and here's the results of that - does anyone have any other ideas"?
NOW DAYS, all the questions come in the form of "What's the best way to do it?" - which translates, basically, to: "Tell me how to do it".
WTF?
This is NOT "News for Nerd, Stuff That Matters".
It's a sad commentary on the "state of the art" of supposed Nerds here, too true.
And the editors.
Why not Skype
Just because you ask: I think some of us don't like a 12MB encrypted binary executable file running on our system that nobody except the creators know what it does.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
Are you with a decent ISP? (If there is such a thing)
If you are with Virgin Media then you will easily exceed their bandwidth limits which you can find at the bottom of this page.
... Most of the time you would simply be streaming video of 2 empty kitchens to each other wouldn't you?
Well, yes. Empty kitchens are the most common state. It depends a lot on the compression algorithm, I suppose. In principle, an empty kitchen takes very little bandwidth to transmit.
So, if one had compression software that was optimized for the 24/7 kitchen case, it would be
doing perhaps 256kbit/sec when someone was walking around, but only 5kbit/second when nothing was moving.
24/7 x 96kbit/sec = 28 Gbyte/month. That actually fits within a small business ADSL plan for GBP 24/month. If it spent 80% of the day transmitting nearly nothing, you'd be down to about 6 gigabytes/month, which you can get from lots of ISPs for less than 20 pounds per month.
You likely won't get away with the bandwidth you'll use doing this -- especially if it's Comcast. Inside the first month, they'll be all up in your business, threatening to shut you down, etc. because you dare to use the bandwidth you're paying for. I don't imagine it's going to be any better with any other ISP either, unless you buy business-class service, in which case they have less of a right to "manage" the bandwidth you're paying (way too much) for. A better idea would be to have a video link-on-demand instead of 24/7; sorry, pal. :-/
It's funny how much people like to unnecessary complicate easy things. Reminds me of that "Big Bang Theory" chapter were the guys try assempling an IKEA furniture and end up "refactoring it".
Use Skype, iChat or whatever chat app with video capabilities you like most. I'm using Skype with my parents and inlaws on a daily basis and works fine.
Or, at least, get a life ;)
I don't know, but this sub thread was about iChat, which depends on about 3 gigs of encrypted code, the majority of which only the dark Apple overlords knows what goes on inside of.
Telephone networks, network switches at your ISP, cell phones, gmail, name servers, and non-local web servers all have code invisible to the end user.
So, we might as well get paranoid enough to shun all modern communications technology if we are going to get our panties in a wad over a single closed source program.
I've got a baby, a mac, and several distant relatives, some with macs and some with PCs. iChat is noticably better than skype. As a bonus 10.5 has screen sharing built in too, just as easy to use.
For extra ease if use, Google for the terminal command to make iChat auto-accept incoming requests.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Ah, you're talking about the fact that Skype will use port 80 if its default port isn't available. Much ado about nothing.
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