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Skype group video calling becomes free

blogs.skype.com

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Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#141

Post by jamra »

bertil wrote: post #131
jamra wrote: post #91

I use Skype everyday to communicate with family abroad. I have a camera mounted on my television. The quality of Skype is abysmal. Most of the time, you do not have HD video. When I switch over to using facetime, the video quality is amazing. I don't know what happened to Skype, but its quality is by far the worst available on the market.

> The quality of Skype is abysmal. Most of the time, you do not have HD video. That comment reminded me of what Louis CK says about wifi on the plane — or attitude towards technology in general. I won’t link because the swear ratio is… well he uses all the possible syntactical options of the f-bomb. The quality difference is striking, and Skype pales in comparison. But live video feed between common computers is some…

When I'm trying to introduce my baby to his grandparents overseas and he can't really make them out, I really feel the loss. They sing to him and he can hear it alright, but I also want him to follow their faces.

If the connection is just too poor for whatever reason, it's acceptable, however, when facetime works so well while we are connected to the same wifis, the problem is in Skype.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#142

Post by dzhiurgis »

stoev wrote: post #129
rdl wrote: post #61

I don't understand why Microsoft took so long to do this. If they had been faster after Google Hangouts, it never would have gained a beachhead. Xbox One could easily find a secondary market as a conference room device; a Microsoft version of Airplay and Chromecast (ideally open to Mac and general web as well) would take more engineering, but would have been awesome too.

"I don't understand why Microsoft took so long to do this." Skype had free video group calls long before Google Hangouts even existed. If I remember correctly, they forced their users to pay for it a few months or a year after Google Hangouts launched, which was a really stupid move which surely helped Google's product a lot.

I think that happened when they centralised it.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#143

Post by skeletonjelly »

astrange wrote: post #113
innoying wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is Skype recently moved to a centralized infrastructure instead of a P2P which has caused terrible issues for pretty much everybody. Allegedly this was done to allow the NSA to snoop on conversations easier.

Allegedly according to whom? P2P infrastructure isn't realistic when most of your clients are on mobile. Skype used to drain your battery simply by logging in for an hour. Now it doesn't! Skype and G+ use the same codec families as well, so the differences would be in bandwidth allocation.

It wasn't P2P for everyone, they had "servers" in the P2P network called supernodes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype_protocol#Peer-to-peer_ar...

The battery drain could be from anything. I'm not sure if they use GCM (Google Cloud Messaging) to reduce battery these days but without looking at the code I don't think you could say switching to a centralised server model fixed the battery issues.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#144

Post by simonk »

stoev wrote: post #129
rdl wrote: post #61

I don't understand why Microsoft took so long to do this. If they had been faster after Google Hangouts, it never would have gained a beachhead. Xbox One could easily find a secondary market as a conference room device; a Microsoft version of Airplay and Chromecast (ideally open to Mac and general web as well) would take more engineering, but would have been awesome too.

"I don't understand why Microsoft took so long to do this." Skype had free video group calls long before Google Hangouts even existed. If I remember correctly, they forced their users to pay for it a few months or a year after Google Hangouts launched, which was a really stupid move which surely helped Google's product a lot.

Group video was only free for a very limited time on the beta only on the Windows application. It became a paid product over a year before Google Hangouts launched.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#145

Post by gmjosack »

I'd written Skype off as malware after it continued to put a browser extension on my computer that parsed every single page I visited without my permission. Even after removing the plugin it would regularly disappear. This behavior is not okay.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#146

Post by tanzam75 »

rz2k wrote: post #133
shmerl wrote: post #78

I hope open protocols will catch up already. XMPP/Jingle has user side multiplexing for a while (MUJI), but it requires decent bandwidth. It's a deferred XEP for some reason though. Also, most clients lack support for it. Server side multiplexing wasn't standardized for some reason, so XMPP servers didn't come up with anything common so far. Skype remains just another proprietary walled garden communication network w…

I think it is amazing how little strategy and disruption there seems to be in the industry. My dad is mostly retired, he rents out his office, but his secretary still comes into the office one afternoon a week. I didn't want to stress her out by asking her to learn new technology, but the phone was used only an hour or two a month. I ported the same number he'd had for a few decades to Google Voice, and attached an O…

> Both Microsoft and Google should offer small businesses packaged services where you bring your own internet service, then buy telephone plus email using your own domain name from them for a flat fee.

Microsoft is focusing on the enterprise, because that's where the money is. For example, CERN is using Microsoft Lync as an IP PBX, using the Polycom CX300. It looks like a desk telephone and works like a desk telephone. It can even retrieve voicemail. But it plugs in to a USB port and uses Lync for calling. https://espace.cern.ch/mmmservices-help/UnifiedCommunication...

It's a lot simpler to sell to CERN and pick up 2500 users, than to sell to 2500 different barbershops. For one thing, CERN has competent IT staff who won't be costing Microsoft a lot of money in support calls.

As for Google, they seem to actively be avoiding telephony. For example, Gizmo5 used to offer SIP connectivity, and then Google got rid of Google Voice forwarding to Gizmo5. And now the elimination of XMPP and the option to use Obihai. Even Google Fiber was set up as a double-play instead of a triple-play: they'll sell you Internet and television, but not phone.

I get the feeling that Google wants to make absolutely sure that it is not regulated as a telephony provider, with all the hassles around 911, service availability, being able to call high-cost rural exchanges, etc.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#147

Post by donniezazen »

gmjosack wrote: post #145

I'd written Skype off as malware after it continued to put a browser extension on my computer that parsed every single page I visited without my permission. Even after removing the plugin it would regularly disappear. This behavior is not okay.

That's is a Windows thing. I think you could uninstall Skype plugin.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#148

Post by ams6110 »

rz2k wrote: post #133
shmerl wrote: post #78

I hope open protocols will catch up already. XMPP/Jingle has user side multiplexing for a while (MUJI), but it requires decent bandwidth. It's a deferred XEP for some reason though. Also, most clients lack support for it. Server side multiplexing wasn't standardized for some reason, so XMPP servers didn't come up with anything common so far. Skype remains just another proprietary walled garden communication network w…

I think it is amazing how little strategy and disruption there seems to be in the industry. My dad is mostly retired, he rents out his office, but his secretary still comes into the office one afternoon a week. I didn't want to stress her out by asking her to learn new technology, but the phone was used only an hour or two a month. I ported the same number he'd had for a few decades to Google Voice, and attached an O…

Most people I know who have such small business phone needs will just use their mobile phone.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#149

Post by julianz »

lotharrr wrote: post #90
perbu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We've been using hangouts more or less exclusively for at least a year. Hangouts are very stable. When doing training we have hangout sessions that last for two days (minus the nights of course). The problem with hangouts are with access control. Most people are not signed in with an ID that matches their email address and I still don't know how to schedule a hangout that is protected only by it's URL.

I've been able to create URL-based "unlisted" hangouts with: http://plus.google.com/hangouts/_ That will redirect you to a new hangout URL, and (in my experience) you can just copy/paste the new URL to other folks. To use it, they'll need to be logged into a G+ account, but it doesn't matter which one.

Oh upvote the shit out of this! The only hassle we've had with Hangouts is how to start one by yourself and then get a link that's easily pastable into IM so everyone else can join, and this works like a charm.

Re: Skype group video calling becomes free

#150

Post by hackuser »

npizzolato wrote: post #125
dublinben wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Video calling in Jitsi works fantastically right now. There's little excuse for people still using proprietary video conferencing platforms.

The fact that you think people are making excuses to use proprietary video conferencing platforms (or other communication platforms) is why things like TextSecure and Jitsi will likely never take off. You're really just making excuses for the TextSecure and Jitsi teams. For the most part, no one cares whether they're using something that is open source or proprietary. Most people don't event care much about abstract…

> For the most part, no one cares whether they're using something that is open source or proprietary. Most people don't event care much about abstract concepts like "security" or "encryption"

You say it as if it's universal and intractable. Awareness has jumped since Snowden's revelations began, AFAICT, and I've read several places that security-oriented services have seen a very large jump in demand.

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