With recent refinements of Flash and Java/AJAX, webcam chat systems can
be handled, cross-platform in browsers. Like language barriers and
cultural barriers, system platform barriers are beginning to fade away
quickly.
Random video chat systems were the first apparition of this new form
of online video chat, and were for the most part a toy. They did however
provide some useful variety-rich communication and interaction
environment with a high level of safety due to distance.
However, now more direct, predetermined group video chat systems are becoming popular. These free webcam chat sites are springing up like dandelions and are becoming quite popular. Where there once had to be complicated and often unreliable conference calls and video chat sessions set up with programs dedicated to it, now it's much easier. These clients often never worked, or had issues between platforms, ISPs or any number of other variables.
The ease of this is helping to make the technology much more practical. As video compression math gets increasingly better, this trend will continue. But, have you ever wondered how this technology works, or why it was difficult to make it work the way it does now until very recently?
It's actually not that complicated. Webcam chat systems actually pretty much work the same way as old streaming video which public video sites use to this day. A connection is established, and the video data is sent in bits of data called "packets" in a finite amount. Every so many seconds, a certain amount of video is in the memory, called a "buffer", and played on the screen.
With free video chat services on web pages, there are just two of these. One of them is capturing your video stream and sending it to the other end of the conversation. At the same time, there is another stream coming right to the video area on your end. So really, it's just two live streams between exclusive machines.
But, consider the nature of video. An image over cable internet takes a few seconds to receive and render. Double that for sending it to another person to receive and view. Now, with webcam chat, you have video, which is many, many images and sound at the same time. This is a heavy thing. Web browsers used to not have the power to handle this. At one time, even bandwidth restrictions were present.
All this in mind, it's not surprising that while the video phone concept has been a long time predicted and awaited, its current incarnation wasn't really possible until near the end of the past decade. It will be very interesting to see what continued improvement of bandwidth computing power and browser capacity will make this able to do in the future. Only time will tell, of course.
If you are interested in learning more about online group chat , it is recommended that you check out Camfrog’s Philippines Camfrog .
Random video chat systems were the first apparition of this new form
of online video chat, and were for the most part a toy. They did however
provide some useful variety-rich communication and interaction
environment with a high level of safety due to distance.
However, now more direct, predetermined group video chat systems are becoming popular. These free webcam chat sites are springing up like dandelions and are becoming quite popular. Where there once had to be complicated and often unreliable conference calls and video chat sessions set up with programs dedicated to it, now it's much easier. These clients often never worked, or had issues between platforms, ISPs or any number of other variables.
The ease of this is helping to make the technology much more practical. As video compression math gets increasingly better, this trend will continue. But, have you ever wondered how this technology works, or why it was difficult to make it work the way it does now until very recently?
It's actually not that complicated. Webcam chat systems actually pretty much work the same way as old streaming video which public video sites use to this day. A connection is established, and the video data is sent in bits of data called "packets" in a finite amount. Every so many seconds, a certain amount of video is in the memory, called a "buffer", and played on the screen.
With free video chat services on web pages, there are just two of these. One of them is capturing your video stream and sending it to the other end of the conversation. At the same time, there is another stream coming right to the video area on your end. So really, it's just two live streams between exclusive machines.
But, consider the nature of video. An image over cable internet takes a few seconds to receive and render. Double that for sending it to another person to receive and view. Now, with webcam chat, you have video, which is many, many images and sound at the same time. This is a heavy thing. Web browsers used to not have the power to handle this. At one time, even bandwidth restrictions were present.
All this in mind, it's not surprising that while the video phone concept has been a long time predicted and awaited, its current incarnation wasn't really possible until near the end of the past decade. It will be very interesting to see what continued improvement of bandwidth computing power and browser capacity will make this able to do in the future. Only time will tell, of course.
If you are interested in learning more about online group chat , it is recommended that you check out Camfrog’s Philippines Camfrog .
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