Re: [WinMac] Videoconferencing

Curtis Wilcox(cwcx[at]uhura.cc.rochester.edu)
Mon, 03 Aug 1998 14:34:22 -0400

At 10:17 AM 8/3/98 -0700, Darryl Lee wrote:
>[Wyatt asked about videoconferencing]
>
>Does M$ NetMeeting have a Mac version? i don't know.

Apparently not! Which is sort of too bad since MS is using their
market-killing strategy of just throwing it out there client & server for
free as a place-holder to throttle back competition.

>Uhm, back in the day (i'm getting nostalgic again), i played with
>CU-SeeMe, which was fun and all, but required a Unix "reflector" if
>you wanted to connect more than two people together.
>
>Some of the guys who created CU-SeeMe went on to create iVisit, which
>allows you to do > 2 people, but peer-to-peer, no server required.
>It's neat stuff, and maybe it'll work for you? http://www.ivisit.com

CU-SeeMe's commerical life has continued under White Pine
<http://www.wpine.com/>. They have a product called MeetingPoint which is
for internet-based videoconferencing. You could search www.zdnet.com &
www.techweb.com for "MeetingPoint" and probably get the names of some
competing products.

>Runs over standard Internet connections... um, 28.8 is sufficient.
>
>(As far as hardware, you could get some Connectix QuickCams for
>pretty cheap, around $99 for the B/W ones.)

I would suggest that 28.8 is NOT sufficient if you're doing audio over it
and want more than 1 frame/second. If you want something better than a
conference call with snapshots I would think 56k up & downstream would be
the bare minimum.

You haven't stated what purpose the videoconferencing serves. What do you
gain from seeing faces? You might be better served by traditional
conference calling in conjunction with a whiteboard and/or shared
application system.

-- 
Curtis Wilcox     cwcx@uhura.cc.rochester.edu
Desktop Systems Consultant       716/274-1160
Eastman School of Music       Pager: x12-3290


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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Mon Aug 03 1998 - 11:40:27 PDT