[muglo] iChat AV
- From: "Eric D" <hideme666@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: muglo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sun, 11 Jan 2004 11:53:11 -0500
Well, yesterday (Saturday) I finally managed two trans-Atlantic audio chats
with iChat AV (first time I couldn't get it to work b/t 10.2.6 (me) and
iChat AV beta and 10.3.0 (my brother)).
My machine is: a Pismo G3/400 512 MB 10.3.2 with mic above monitor (& a
quiet 20 GB laptop HD) and me using a set of headphones to listen. I have a
Virgin.net ADSL connection (512 kbps down, 256 up) (slow... compared to
Canada).
1st chat (17:00-18:00 GMT (?) (12:00-13:00 EST)): with a G4/733 10.3.2 tower
on a Rogers (London) cable modem with iSight as the microphone.
There was a bit of latency (perhaps 0.5 sec -1.0 sec). Enough to be
different from telephone though, it was useable. Quality of audio chat was
high and impressive (didn't get video sent to my machine from the iSight. Is
it possible to have video sent in only one direction?). The one problem we
encountered was that there was a bit of feedback on the G4/733's side that
was audible on my end. This could be fixed through the use of headphones on
the G4.
2nd chat (19:30-21:00 GMT (14:30-16:00 EST)): with a PB G4/500 512 MB 10.3.2
on a Toronto FreeNet ADSL connection (1.7 Mbps down, 384 Kbps up), built-in
mic on the left speaker (*strange* location) of laptop with a *noisy* 30 GB
HD. Connection to the ADSL modem was through a NetGear 814MR 802.11b
(wireless) router and an AirPort card in the PB.
Quality of audio chat was extremely high when HD on G4 was spun down and
latency was virtually nil (it was there if you really looked but you didn't
notice it in casual use... just like you can detect a latency on
trans-Atlantic phone calls sometimes if you try). It felt no different from
a telephone conversation (except you knew that the evil Ma Bells and BTs
weren't getting any $$$ or £££ out of you :) :) :).
On the G4/500 noise from the HD (when spinning) was extremely disruptive
since the mic was so close to the HD. This can be fixed through the use of
an external mic or spinning down the HD: there is no way to spin down the HD
at will in OS X as far as I can tell! I have searched far and wide on the
web and the only threads I can find are for people who want to stop their
HDs from spinning down. One solution that may work is to set the delay until
HD spin-down to one minute using a unix utility run as "sudo" (some people
use it to up the time before spin-down but I want to see if it works to
speed up spin-down to one-min).
I wonder if the latency difference b/t the two "calls" was a function of the
difference b/t how cable modem and ADSL are connected to the central
servers?
Eric.
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