Adventures in broadband video

Our intrepid editor tries to meet the world face-to-face.

These days, the best thing about broadband isn't the speed - it's the cool new applications you get to run on top of it.

Take videoconferencing. Emerging products and applications make the old days of Webcams seem like black and white TV vs. color TV. Broadband's fat pipe gives you a chance for higher resolution and increased frame rates, meaning less jitter and latency.

We spent the past few weeks trying out some of the latest gear and software aimed at the power consumer. But consumer technology also can help firms stay in touch with their remote-office workers.

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These days, the best thing about broadband isn't the speed - it's the cool new applications you get to run on top of it.

Take videoconferencing. Emerging products and applications make the old days of Webcams seem like black and white TV vs. color TV. Broadband's fat pipe gives you a chance for higher resolution and increased frame rates, meaning less jitter and latency.

We spent the past few weeks trying out some of the latest gear and software aimed at the power consumer. But consumer technology also can help firms stay in touch with their remote-office workers.

We wanted to try a sampling of what's out there - different forms and methods of connecting mean that these are not one-size-fits-all products. Your situation and preferences might vary from ours.

For successful home videoconferencing, start with a good-quality Webcam. For products that required one, we used the Logitech QuickCam Pro 4000 ($80). The device comes with Yahoo Messenger, which includes a videoconferencing feature with its instant-messenging application. Other instant-messaging services, such as Windows Messenger, also provide videoconferencing. These applications are good, but sound and picture qualities depend on the quality of the Webcam and Internet traffic. Bottom line: If the picture is important, go with a higher-end model.

Yahoo Messenger has a SuperCam mode that lets you enhance the image quality when you're videoconferencing with one person directly rather than with several at once. However, this involves opening ports on your home gateway or router, so you'll need some network knowledge.

Apple iSight and iChat AV

We had a blast with Apple's iSight camera and iChat AV application. At test time, the iChat AV was still in beta, but it had enough great features to warrant a look. The system works only with Macintosh computers running OS X 10.2.5 or later, and a broadband connection is required.

Apple iSight and iChat AV Cost: $150 for camera. IChat AV free with Mac OS X Panther; Mac OS Jaguar (10.2.5 and higher) users must pay $30. Pros: Outstanding quality; easy setup. Cons: Mac-to-Mac only.

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Setup and configuration was a breeze, and we were up and videoconferencing in no time. No firewall or router configuration was necessary; the iChat AV application detected whether the camera was operational and whether any buddies had their cameras ready. Sending an instant message to a buddy also sends a videoconferencing request pop-up message; once the recipient accepts, the connection is made. (While we could chat with PC users, we could only videoconference with iSight and iChat AV users.)

Apple gets auto-focus right. On other Web cams, we usually ended up manually configuring the focus settings, which never seemed quite right. The iSight camera does this for you. The picture was extremely clear.

You can stream video up to 30 frames per second, but we got about 13 to 15 frame/sec. A higher frame rate might eat up bandwidth on your network, so the amount of network activity could affect performance quality. The iSight camera also works with other videoconferencing applications, so we tried it with Yahoo Messenger. However, the picture quality declined somewhat.