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.'"

Comments

Hard videophone is the option

[neutrino38]

We have bought a pair of Grandstream videophone. The are cheap and much easier to use than PC for older people as they are basically ... telephones.

You can even setup Grandpa's one in auto-answer mode but I would not recommend it for obvious privacy issues as one of the comments above maliciously reminded.

AH and to overcome NAT and dynamic IP address issues, you have to setup a hosted SIP proxy and media relay such as Asterisk. I cheat here as this the very business of my company.

By the way if you want a pair of free SIP accounts and the Grandstream videophone, we could sell them to you.

Re:Apple iChat

[rwven]

Just for anyone who hasn't tried iChat, I've used a LOT of video conferencing software and iChat's video conferencing is leaps and bounds ahead of anything else out there for the mainstream.

I have no idea what they do to preserve so much video quality on the trip, but it's astoundingly good. Comparing it to Skype or regular AIM (or MSN or what-have-you) chat is pretty laughable and anyone who's really compared will vouch for that.

Re:Bandwidth caps?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Nah, make a point of getting an analog clock with no seconds hand; you have an instant way of double-checking that the link is actually active, and a handy timeout prevention device. One frame per minute isn't going to kill your bandwidth.