video chat using ichat - mac

[pcowen]

I'm trying to do a video chat with a friend, both using mac and both using ichat. Has anyone donethid, set it up. We both have .mac accounts and a AIM account. We both get the same error message telling us that the other person has not responded to the invitation to a video chat. Any help would be useful.

[PJ S]

Can you message okay via iChat?
What's your AIM name?
Later this evening, I can set one up and see if it works.
Maybe one of you has a duff camera, but that should be exposed if you play with Photo Booth.

[Leithen]

iChat - pile of poo. Use Skype instead - if you're up for it, try this hack for near DVD quality.

[PJR]

iChat when it works is brilliant, and it easily has the best video & audio quality of all the video conferencing apps out there. But you'll notice I said "When it works".. The past few months its been very difficult to connect for me too. The Apple discussion forums are full of similar complaints. It definitely is not one of those "It just works" applications that Apple is usually so good at.
It is very sensitive to networking hardware, and it does need more than a couple of ports opening as well.

The best tips and tricks you'll find on the Apple discussion forums, here..
http://discussions.apple.com/forum.js

If you can get it to work, then its definitely worth sticking with. Otherwise Skype, Camfrog and Yahoo video conferencing programs are all worth a shot. And as an added bonus, those are all cross platform compatible also.

Apparently many of the problems with iChat are more to do with AOL/AIM having changed their protocol slightly (iChat works via the AIM network). But this was ages ago, so Apple should have had enough time to work around that by now. Also, Some ISP's are starting to block popular video conferencing ports. In which case, you'll notice similar connection issues on other video conferencing software too.

P,