Video Chats Overcome Clunkiness

When AT&T demonstrated its video telephone at the 1964 World’s Fair, everyone — including AT&T — pretty much figured that it would be the future. People wouldn’t just hear each other over the phone — they would see each other, too.

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What everyone forgot, of course, was a little factor called human nature. People don’t want to be watched on the phone. You don’t want to have to make yourself presentable, to perform or to give up the freedom of multitasking. In the absence of video, you can walk around cleaning, perform small acts of personal grooming, maybe roll your eyes at a stupid comment.

And so here we are, 45 years later, still making audio-only phone calls. Not because of technological limits, but human ones.

So what about Skype?

If you’re under 30 or so, you probably know all about Skype. It’s a free program (Mac, Windows or Linux) that connects you to other people who have Skype. You can type instant messages back and forth, make crystal-clear audio calls, and, yes, even make video calls, provided your computers have webcams or built-in cameras — all without paying a penny.

No wonder more than 300 million people have tried Skype. It’s a natural for the college crowd, in particular; free calls are especially attractive when you’re young and broke and miles from your friends and family.

Of course, plenty of other programs do the same things: iChat, Google Talk, MSN Messenger, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, SightSpeed and Oovoo. But because of its simplicity, its quality and its early start, Skype is the one whose name has become a verb.

On Tuesday, after a year of public testing, the Skype team (now owned by eBay) released Skype 4.0 for Windows, which the company calls “the biggest new release in Skype’s history.”

The first change strikes you immediately — and during the months of public testing, caused howls of protest among the faithful: Skype is no longer a flotilla of little windows dancing around your screen. It’s now a single consolidated window. You can still carry on multiple chats or audio calls simultaneously, but you switch among them by clicking their names in a list at the left side, rather than juggling multiple windows. (A variation of the old arrangement is still available.)

All kinds of useful features are on display. You can drag various sections of the software to resize them; discreet notifications pop up from your system tray when people are trying to reach you; you can import the address book from Hotmail, Yahoo or Outlook.

The most important changes in Skype 4, though, have to do with video calls. If you’ve ever used video-chat programs before, then you know what an unsatisfying experience it can be. The picture breaks up. Connections are dropped. Clarity comes and goes.

Worst of all, there’s that annoying delay that makes both you and your conversation partner seem slightly dimwitted. Reactions lag, jokes fall flat and you wind up accidentally interrupting each other — “Oh, I’m sorry, go ahead ”— all because there’s a one-second delay between saying something and its arrival at the other person’s speakers.

The video quality still varies when you use Skype. Fast Internet connections and fast computers still work better than slow ones. But if you do have a good setup — wow. With certain Logitech or Philips webcam models, Skype 4.0 can deliver a picture that’s as big and sharp and smooth as a TV picture (30 frames a second, 640 by 480 pixels), with almost no delay.

In my test calls to friends in California, New York and Virginia, we were amazed at what a difference it makes when the delay goes away. (Maybe, for its next trick, Skype can lend its technology to the world’s cellphone carriers.)

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Just for kicks, we then tested iChat, Oovoo and Sightspeed under the same conditions, on the same computers. None of them matched Skype’s immediacy or video and audio quality.

According to the company, you get the best results if both parties are using Skype 4.0 for Windows (or Skype 2.8 for Mac). But some quality improvement will be apparent even if only one party has the latest.

Skype’s audio quality has always been terrific — more like a CD than a telephone, so if you have decent speakers, audio calls have an eerie, you-are-there presence. But the company says that the new version requires only half as much data to transmit all of that sound. In other words, no matter what your Internet connection, you’ll probably hear an improvement.

CONTINUED : Supplement, not a replacement

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