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Multi-way video conferencing using MacBook Pro and iChat to initiate conference

Submitted by Jonathan on 24 July 2006 - 5:51pm

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Just by chance, I stumbled across the multi-way video conferencing technology that exists in iChat. You might think, well, what's new? That's been possible for easily a year now, and I played quite a lot with that sometime ago whilst I was still working at Ultralab.

However, back then, I had to use the G5 Power Mac Desktop computer to initiate a multi-way iChat conference using video, but now it seems the MacBook Pro laptop is powerful enough to host such a conference.

Amy, Dan and I played with this technology yesterday evening. Although the quality of the image was much reduced, the audio came through very clear and was perfectly useable. Both Dan and Amy's images of the other participants in the conference was not so clear as mine. I'm not sure whether this was due to the limited bandwidth they each had, or that their computers are the less powerful iBook machines, or whether in fact, being only participants rather than the host had anything to do with it?

We tried to connect again on our local network at Stepping Stones school, this morning, and found the same issue about image quality applied. This perhaps rules out a bandwidth issue since we were each running on at least 10Mbits wireless connections.

Read more about our explorations using iChat and multi-way video conferences.

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