Skype has released a public beta of Skype 3.6. As usual you can expect a bunch of bug fixes and general tweaks. But there's also one major new feature: support for high quality video chats.What do we mean by high quality? 640 x 480 resolution and 30 frames per second. You'll need a broadband connection and a webcam capable of 640 x 480 resolutions in order to make high quality video calls. Otherwise, you can always resort to and old fashioned 320 x 240 window displaying video at 15 frames per second.
While this is the first version of Skype to officially support VGA video chats, there's been a hack for enabling high quality video since February.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
10-11-2007 @ 9:39AM
nemi said...
Nothing to see here...move along....
No really. PC's at both ends must be dual core and only two (yes 2!) models of logitech web cam are supported in skype for "HQ" video calls.
Makes me wonder how they actually find Beta testers for this, the chances of two people who know each other meeting the above limtied requirements must be very rare.
Come on skype, lots of web cam companies have been making 1.3Mp still and VGA res video compliant web cams for over 2 years, why not make software that support that large hardware base?
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10-13-2007 @ 9:08AM
Skype fan said...
Cool I'm going to download beta.
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11-16-2007 @ 8:10AM
J.A. Watson said...
Why the unnecessary restriction?
In the Skype 3.6 beta releases, it was possible to manually activate the higher resolution video with cameras other than the three Logitech cameras mentioned in this article. It was proven in the Skype User Forums that a variety of other webcams were capable of 640x480 resolution video, both from Logitech and from other manufacturers. With the 3.6 production release, this manual activation capability has been removed, so only users with one of the three specific Logitech cameras will be able to benefit from higher resolution video. It is surprising that Skype has decided to relegate the majority of their existing users who own webcams to "second class status", apparently only because of a marketing agreement with Logitech. If the Skype/Logitech "High Quality Video" is truly superior, as they say, then why not let it stand on its own merits, and allow users with other webcams to benefit from the improved resolution? One would think that this would encourage more webcam owners to start using Skype for video calls, and probably encourage more users to buy the "better" Logitech cameras, when they see how good High Quality Video can be.
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