Sightspeed is another VOIP software solution for Windows and Macintosh similar to Skype. Sightspeed offers a few things Skype does not yet offer (as far as I know) including multi-party, multi-platform videoconferences (with up to 4 people) and streamlined video blogging. iChat offers 4 person videoconferencing (I participated in my first one this weekend actually with family members) but just with people using Macintosh computers. Sightspeed and Skype are both multi-platform, which is excellent since that provides more possibilities for connecting with others.
I am pretty happy with Skype and iChat now for my audio and videoconferencing needs, along with Adium X for IM, so I don’t think I’ll be giving Sightspeed a try anytime soon. The large existing user base for these other tools is another big reason not to give something different a try, if what is working now isn’t broken.
If anyone has tried Sightspeed or has a compelling reason to use it instead of Skype or iChat, please let me know by commenting. Some are claiming Sightspeed has the best video quality, but with bandwidth limitations I don’t think there is often going to be much difference which tool you use if you are connecting over the commodity Internet on a busy local network or when the entire Internet is congested with more traffic than usual. Sightspeed’s “SightSpeedTV” (watch TV from anywhere if you have a home computer with a tuner card) isn’t of interest to me: I don’t watch much TV now! (That’s probably a big reason I end up blogging and podcasting a lot!)
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4 responses to “Sightspeed VOIP”
try it; you’ll like it 🙂
I just tried installing this on an OS X machine. The iSight worked just fine in Sightspeed, but I couldn’t get it to work with anything else afterwards, even after (a) quitting Sightspeed, (b) uninstalling Sightspeed, and (c) restarting the computer. I finally unplugged the camera and plugged it back in, and it worked.
With Skype supporting videoconferencing now on PCs (and hopefully soon on Macs), I just don’t see the need for another piece of software on my machine. And the whole “watch TV” thing? Not for me. But if it were, there are tricks to do this with iChat as well.
Steve, i’m assuming your iSight camera is a fire wire camera correct? There is a known bug, where the camera will lose connection to the computer. In cases like this, you just need to shutdown SightSpeed, un-plug your camera, wait a few seconds, plug it back in, and you’re good to go.
I must say, that I enjoy SightSpeed to the fullest. I have a lot of Mac friends that have moved to SightSpeed. Why?
1) Better Video Quality
2) Cross platform support (Mac to PC)
But then again, you have to try it for yourself 🙂