VIDEOCONFERENCES Slowly, quality will get better

America Online's new software added video to text messaging in February.
By MIKE LANGBERG
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Here's how videoconferencing should work:
You plug a digital camcorder or one of those golf-ball-like Web cams into your computer. With a minimum of fuss, you connect to distant family and friends for conversations that include lifelike full-screen video accompanied by clear audio that's perfectly in sync with your lips.
Here's how videoconferencing works today:
Installing Web cams and videoconferencing software often involves answering scary questions about Network Address Translation and whether there are open ports in your Internet firewall.
Once you've made the process work, you see the other person in a tiny window with blurry, jerky images and stuttering audio that's always a disconcerting step ahead or behind the picture.
I'd like to tell you the gap is closing fast. But I can't. The best news I can offer, after looking at the latest technology, is that the gap is closing slowly.
The biggest headline of late came in February, when America Online's Instant Messenger (www.aim.com) -- the heavyweight in the extremely popular category of IM -- released version 5.5 of its software, adding video for the first time to text messaging and voice chat.
Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger, AIM's two main rivals, have both offered videoconferencing for more than two years, but they're much smaller. AIM now contends 50 million people use the free service every month, sending nearly 2 billion instant messages per day.
AIM 5.5, then, will undoubtedly give millions of people their first exposure to videoconferencing.
SightSpeed
The other important development comes from a much smaller contender, a tiny outfit in Berkeley, Calif., called SightSpeed (www.sightspeed.com) that runs a videoconferencing service of the same name.
SightSpeed unveiled an improved version 2.0 of its service in January, and said in February it will offer multi-party videoconferencing later this year.
SightSpeed isn't perfect, but in my tests, it offered noticeably better performance than any of the Big Three IM services.
Before I dive into the details, let's review what you need to get started.
Videoconferencing requires a broadband Internet connection, the kind of fast access home users get through a cable modem or DSL line. If you're entering cyberspace through a dial-up phone modem, you're out of luck.
You also need a newer computer. The videoconferencing component of AIM 5.5 requires Windows XP; Mac users can videoconference with their AIM 5.5 buddies using Apple's iChat software, which requires the newest version of Mac OS X, called Panther or 10.3.
Similar, SightSpeed requires Windows 2000 or Windows XP, or OS X 10.3 for the Mac.
Users of older Windows machines can still try videoconferencing with MSN Messenger (http://messenger.msn.com) or Yahoo Messenger (http://messenger. yahoo.com), which both work with Windows 98 and Windows Millennium Edition.
Web cams are widely available for under $100; my favorite for overall quality is the QuickCam line from Logitech (www.logitech.com).
You can also use a digital camcorder as a Web cam, if your computer has the FireWire port -- also known as 1394 or i.Link -- for making a connection.
One advantage of this approach: You can play tapes in the camcorder for the other person to see and hear.
Though the quality of videoconferencing leaves much to be desired, at least it's free.
Comparison
AIM, MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger all allow unlimited usage at no cost. SightSpeed gives a 15-day free trial. After the trial is over, you're limited to 15 minutes of free videoconferencing per day or you can get unlimited service for either $4.95 a month or $49.50 year.
SightSpeed hasn't yet announced pricing for the multiparty service, due this summer, where groups of three or four can videoconference.
I tested both SightSpeed and AIM 5.5 using a Logitech QuickCam Pro 4000 camera, a late-model Windows XP computer borrowed from Dell and my Comcast cable modem. On the other end, I alternated between my father in New Jersey and my friend Larry Magid, a fellow technology columnist based in Palo Alto, Calif.
AIM 5.5 did a competent if unspectacular job with videoconferencing. The motion was smooth and the audio in sync, but the video window was tiny -- just a few inches square on a typical monitor -- and couldn't be resized. Larry and my Dad were so small that I never felt I was truly seeing them.
SightSpeed, as I said, moves a small but worthwhile step beyond AIM and my previous experiences with MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger.
The company's software stresses speed and audio sync over image quality, and there's a clear benefit: You can see lips move as people talk, with their voices in perfect sync, and the image doesn't dissolve into a storm of brightly colored squares whenever someone turns his or her head.
But there's also a downside. SightSpeed must sacrifice image detail, so the picture is blurry. The video in SightSpeed can be resized or even viewed full screen, but the lack of detail becomes painfully obvious if you make the window bigger than about a quarter of the screen.
The ultimate flaw in today's videoconferencing, however, has nothing to do with SightSpeed or IM software. It's the short-sighted and stingy policies of broadband providers.
Here's the problem
Cable modem and DSL providers boast about zippy downloads, and they do often deliver data at a blazing 1 megabit per second or more.
What they don't talk about is the cap they've put on upstream speed -- the rate at which data moves from your computer to the Internet. Cable modem service is typically capped at 256 kilobits upstream, or one-quarter of 1 megabit, and DSL at a paltry 128 kilobits.
There's no technical justification for this; providers are doing it only to prevent possible abuse by subscribers who might try to run big Web sites from home.
But there are other ways to clamp down on abusers, and broadband providers could easily give us 512 kilobits or more upstream. That would be enough for home videoconferencing to approach TV-like quality.
My 3-year-old daughter, Sara, has with two sets of loving grandparents on the East Coast, both with access to new computers and broadband. We've tried all the current videoconferencing products, and none are good enough for Sara to have a real interaction.
To any Comcast, SBC or other broadband executives reading this column: How can you heartlessly stand between my cute little moppet and her grandparents? Please take your foot off the upstream hose and bring my family together.