iSight and iChat performance - Uk to Europe

[Fredstar]

Hey there,
A lot of my family live in Holland, whereas we live in the UK, and i am trying to switch them all to macs, principally because of the isight and ichat feature.
But i don't want to dissapoint them, what is the isight/ichat performance like from the UK to europe? Is it choppy at all?
cheers

 

[RoadKill]

I haven't actually tried it across the internet but I suppose the one thing you need to consider is the upload speed of each participant.

UK adsl is often 256kbps upstream, anything less than this and you are likely to see low frame rate.

 

[munkle]

Bandwidth matters more than location. If you're looking to have video chats a fast connection is a must.

 

[Fredstar]

They all have broadband so that is not an issue, in Europe i think their upload is like 1024kb/s so it is a lot more than ours.

Also, i was thinking, in the latest keynote when jobs did the ichat thing with the macbook pro guy, surely at full screen on those massive projection screen the quality was awful??
I have done it full screen on my imac and the quality was pretty shocking.

 

[munkle]

I don't remember the quality being awful when Steve and Phil Schiller did a video chat.

The quality depends mainly on your bandwidth. The quality will improve with faster speeds.

 

[menziep]

I don't remember the quality being awful when Steve and Phil Schiller did a video chat.

The quality depends mainly on your bandwidth. The quality will improve with faster speeds.

steve and phil were about 1 room away
and apple were using ethernet

 

[Applespider]

As munkle says, the more bandwidth upstream, the better quality the video downstream will be. If you only have a 256 upload (and obviously you can't use all of that since you need some downstream at the same time) then your picture won't be crystal clear. But it will be recognisable and better than nothing.

My US pal reckons that my Mac/iSight combo gives her a clearer pic than most of the AIM PC webcam friends if that's any comfort?