What Is Available

What Is Available More than 40 video call software solutions are on the market today. Many are not very good per our rating system, but solutions are continually improving. In the three years since I started using video calls with my 4–year-old daughter, family, and friends, the amount of video call solutions available has doubled if not tripled. There are basically two types of solutions: free and commercial (pay-per-use). Within these two options are SIP, H.323, and custom or proprietary solutions. Commercial solu- tions tend to have more features and offer multiparty connections. Free solutions tend to be basic and may offer additional services as pay-per-use options. Oddly enough, when we rated the video call solutions over the past two years, we found only a few solutions ?oated to the top of the list and it had little to do with cost. Some of the commercial solutions are surprisingly costly for what they offer and the quality they provide, but the quality will improve with time. So the manufacturers of these solutions are really going after their busi- ness model and unique way that they want to provide you a video call solution. Most com- mercial solutions are geared for business use and not personal videoconferencing, though there is some overlap. It all depends on what your personal needs are. We have a short list of video call solutions to recommend, but there are different solu- tions for different situations.The focus of this book is personal videoconferencing, so the short list rates computer-based solutions for one-on-one video calls for Windows-to- Windows or Windows-to-MAC (Apple). We will discuss more on bridging the gap between computer video call software and hardware video telephones in Chapters 6 and 7. 72 Chapter 5 ? Selecting a Computer or Dedicated Videophone Device Short List of Computer Video Call Solutions Cost for Additional H.323 and/ Apple Video 1-on-1 Pay-per-Use or SIP Solution WinTel MAC Mail Video Calls Features Support SightSpeed 4.5 ■ ■ ■ Free ■ none MSN ■ Free Coming none Messenger 7.5 Skype 2.0 ■ Free ■ none Apple iChat AV ■ Free MAC none FWD ■ Free ■ SIP only Communicator CounterPath ■ ■ $60 ■ SIP only EyeBeam 1.1 Polycom PVX 8.0.1 ■ ■ $150 ■ SIP and H.323 There are other video call solutions that I like but are not on the short list because of one feature or because they are still in the development or testing phase. For example, a plug-in for Skype called Video4IM is a good solution for Skype, because the video sender's screen is larger than Skype's video screen, but it is still in testing. WigiWigi, which is still in testing, holds great promise in high-quality multiuser video calls and works with any instant messaging application (the IM applications do not have to be the same).There are many solutions in the market, and we will list them all in Chapters 6 and 7.

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