Sunday, September 24, 2006

I've got lots of other posts in the works, but this one's a quickie.  I finally got ahold of the camera for the 360.  In just seconds, I had a video chat going with my brother.  For families that are far apart, buying a 360 just might be worth it just because it's so dang easy to set up video chat.

What was more surprising is that I plugged it into my PC, and just as quickly, it was set up as a webcam.  That was lucky for me because my fairly new logitech webcam seems to be having some driver issues with the latest build of Windows Vista.

One drawback is that there is no built-in mic, which gets a little annoying if you trying to show someone that Jenna can say "apple", "meow-meow", "ma-ma", and "da-da" on command.

Another drawback is that there is no fullscreen, or even large screen option.  Hopefully that will be rememdied with a software release.  Or perhaps I can write a video chat program with XNA express.  Oooh, that's a good idea.  I hope the APIs support that.

posted on Sunday, September 24, 2006 7:36:08 PM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [3]
Monday, September 25, 2006 5:05:33 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
I'm in the same boat having Joshua in Michigan and his grandparents in Texas. We have been using iChat on the new Apple iMacs and it works pretty good. The picture and sound quality is always good and we vary rarely have issues setting things up. Plus, the iSight seems to have a lot of smarts in it as far as adjusting clarinty, lighting and focus. The real nice thing is it only takes seconds to start a session, which is very useful since the grandparents sometimes like to see their grandson on a daily basis ;). I know you are a microsoft guy, but might be something to check out.

Anyways, congrads on the new job and location!
Monday, September 25, 2006 7:25:27 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
Thanks, Duty. Good to hear from you. Of course video chat on the PC through Windows Live Messenger or whatever else works great as well with all the same features, and we use it all the time to chat with the grandparents. I was just focusing on the pros and cons of new camera for the xbox.
Monday, September 25, 2006 10:41:44 AM (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)
Of course, David bought the same camera for xbox and plugged it into the G5 Powermac and --- nada. Go figure.
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