So, my son is 19 month old. It is a really cute age (I think he will be forever cute… :P), and my mom in Japan really wants to see him. “Video Chat”, we said. “I heard that Skype now supports video chat, mom, go buy a computer and we’ll do video chat.” This is how this nightmare started.
Mistake Number 1: Non-apple web cam. Being a savvy consumer (a better word for “cheapskate”) that I am, bought a cheap USB webcam. Hey, there is a open source driver and commercial driver readily available. WRONG. After 2 different cam, ($40 one and a $90 one), and about 8 hours of configuring and trying, I give up. Apple wins. I buy $150 iSight. I mean, it’s a pretty cool thing and all, but come on! a $150 for a web cam??? (for that i could almost buy 2GB Nano…)
Mistake Number 2: Skype. So, yeah right, Skype‘s video chat is cool? WRONG. For a PC users, maybe. Not for me, not for people who spend bunch-o-dollars to buy the Apple products. I lose. Apple lose. I don’t know, I guess Bill Gates wins. Of course I find this out after my mom placed an order for an about-$1500-brand-new-laptop, with router and USB cam.
Mistake Number 3: AIM Triton. So I read that Apple and AOL is working together so that iChat AV and AIM can do video conference. naturally, I head over to aim.com and see that they have a new one called AIM Triton. I call my mom up and tell her that that the one she should get. WRONG. I guess iChat works with AIM 5.9 but not with Triton. At this point she has this friend of my dad helping her basically full time. I’ve spend more time chatting with him, like, “Try this. No, it didn’t do it. Try this. No, that didn’t do it” for now about 6 hours, between yesterday and today. I lose again. 0-3.
So so far, this webpage, Video Conference How-to by mvldesign.com is the absolutely the best reference on this issue. Very helpful. Giving me hope. The website is the only reason that I have not thrown out the iSight out the window.
But still no success. I guess the issue is the firewall. I’ve changed my router setting according to Apple’s site, but still no go. maybe the problem is on my parents side? This is really frustrating. Why can’t we make those things more simple? How great is the technology when Jonny can’t see his grandma in Japan on daddy’s computer?
Answer that Microsoft, Apple and AOL (and Google, for that matter). ::Sigh::
UPDATE: I guess I am not the only one with this problem. Digital Dad has a same problem and I will try SightSpeed. Good news is that SightSpeed is fully localized in Japanese. Awesome.
UPDATE: I could not get SightSpeed to work, somehow, Video Optimization fails every time and therefore, it doesn’t recognize my iSight. There is no trouble shooting thing or anything, so I gave up. I set my firewalls setting to reflect this websites recommendation, and my mom’s friend set hers up and now it is working! On iChat, I can resize their images and all, everything is great, but for my mom, I guess image of us is pretty tiny and can’t change the resolution or resize the window on AIM 5.9. I hope soon AOL will fix Triton to be able to chat with iChat, or Skype 2.0 for Mac gets released. But for now I am happy that my parents can see my son and he can see them. I also saw my 7 month old nephew. He was cute!
UPDATE: Memo to self: open ports 5060, 5353, 5678, 16384-16403 for UDP, 5190, 5297, 5298 for both UPD and TCP in the router.
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