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Fuzzy Logic Skype on a winner with higher quality video
Fuzzy Logic Skype on a winner with higher quality video | Skype on a winner with higher quality video |
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| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Wednesday, 31 October 2007 | |
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Page 1 of 2   
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With a decent webcam on both sides, users can have great little video conversations, with quality that surpasses that seen on 3G videophones, so much so that really, if I’m going to have a video conference with someone, I’d rather use Skype than my mobile phone if possible. Of course, a mobile phone gives you anywhere, anytime convenience for you and the person you’re calling, but if you’re at your computer, using a webcam is a viable solution that has connected many a traveller to their children back home, through their laptop, a webcam and a hotel broadband connection. Of course, there are business uses for video conferencing as well, but if you wanted high quality video, you needed an expensive video conferencing solution costing thousands of dollars. That’s all changed now with Skype and Logitech, who have teamed up to offer video calls at the VGA resolution of 640x480 at 30 frames per second. A Skype executive stated that the higher quality video calls use 8 times the data of a standard Skype video call, so clearly that broadband connection is needed, but a visual demonstration clearly shows just how much better, smoother and more colourfully correct video conferencing can be with the new technology - and a suitable Logitech webcam. The beta version of Skype 3.6 is needed, as well as one of three Logitech cameras that feature a 2 megapixel sensor (which can enhance photos with software interpolation to a claimed 8 megapixels), a Carl Zeiss lens and auto-focus technology, along with Logitech’s other video processing technologies such as ‘RightLight2’, offering automatic correction of lighting in a video image, along side cool video effects that make you look like you’re wearing a pirate’s hat and beard, appear in different colours and a range of others, and RightSound to eliminate background noise and echoing. One interesting tidbit of information uncovered at the launch is the fact that Logitech is actually a Swiss company, and have started promoting this with a Swiss Made logo on their product's packaging. The three webcams that are compatible with the new High Quality Video service are the Logitech QuickCam Pro 9000 at AUD $149, the QuickCam Pro for Notebooks also at AUD $149 and the QuickCam Sphere AF at AUD $199, which a motorised tilt and pan that can be set to follow you automatically. One thing to be aware of is that both sides of the conversation will also need to have Skype 3.6 beta and the right Logitech camera to enable the higher quality video connection, as well as an upload speed of 380+k, as iTWire colleague Stuart Corner explained in his article on Skype’s release. In addition, the quality is dependent on your bandwidth. If someone in the house starts uploading a lot of data, the higher video quality could ‘degrade gracefully’ to the standard video quality, although once bandwidth has been restored, the video quality will return to the higher quality once more. So, how far does this put Skype and Logitech ahead of the competition - how quickly can they catch up, and what are some interesting stats, facts and figures about Skype, its usage and its customers? Please read onto page 2 for the conclusion... |
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