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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 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.
Don't you have 100 tacos to buy and a Doctor Who marathon to watch?
Yes, but because I took the time to fucking think about it, the PVR in my PC is working just fine so I'll timeshift the Dr Who marathon a bit and take the time to reply to you. Anyway, the Tacos are on their way and it takes a while to stuff 100 of them into the delivery guy's car (so i hear).
I agree with the parent's sentiment - what has happened to the nerd way of doing something because it needed to be done? Very few people want to think about their problems anymore.
The powerful scientific pocket calculator was the start of all this hoo haa. Kids were dumbed down and started forgetting to do basic arithmetic (yes, there are many who can't work out how much change I get when the till is down and I've just ordered a hundred tacos).
The Intarwebs has been the other downfall. People are only too happy to put "i want to do X" into Google and click pages. If no useful results come up they bitch and moan that there is no way to do X (maybe X is just something so menially boring that nobody documented it, or it's just dumb, or nobody ever thought of it yet) but these people don't care.
What you're seeing people is the well-established decline in intelligence and determination which comes with the "google-it" culture.
I drink to make other people interesting!
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. :-/
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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