Person who makes video call has terrible quality.

Question

Just finished testing iChat 5 with my sister-in-law (both of us were using Snow Leopard on Santa-Rosa MacBooks.)
When I would place the call to her, the video was garbled beyond use a few seconds into the chat (as if no I-frames were ever received.) The audio was usable, but with noticeable distortion. The video and audio received on her end were pristine.
When she placed the call to me, the reverse occurred: I could see her wonderfully (although I'm not sure it was better than iChat 4), but she could only see garbled video and hear distorted audio.
For WAP/Routers: She is using a Microsoft MN-700, I am using a Linksys WRT54G (with the Tomato firmware for NAT-PMP support.)
The connection doctor reports (on my side at least) that my router is "Port Restricted." Although my problems are with quality, not necessarily connectivity.
Any advice is appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi,
In iChat 4 it seemed that an Apple Base Station did better with PMP turned ON
In Snow Leopard people have reported it better in Apple Base Station if it is Off.
iChat will fail in Video if it senses less than 50kbps
A 1-1 chat in Video in any Version has always been quoted as need 100kbps
a 4 Way Video chat is quoted a 384 kbps as a minimum requirement although like a 1-1 chat it can be done with less although quality suffers.
In iChat 4 I have rarely seen iChat state it is using above 500kbps in the Connection Doctor during a chat no matter how fast each end is.
iChat 5 is displaying higher but not over 800kbps
As it is a case of matching different Internet Speeds of different people around the world there naturally has to be a fairly low starting point.
11:23 PM Tuesday; September 15, 2009
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