I work for a small video production company here in VT. We are looking for a cheap way to video conference with our LA office. We have a cable modem here, and the LA office has a DSL line. There is very little traffic on both lines. While the editing is done on Mac based Avids, most of the office machines are PC's.
Being a Mac guy I would love to use iChatAV, as it's easy to set up for beginners, and the quality is great.
Money is the issue here tho. Apple says you can use iChatAV on any G4 (and I'm guessing G5) but you need a 600Mhz G3 or greater.
Anyone out there using iChatAV on old 350Mhz G4's? They would be the cheapest to buy and set up, and would be used ONLY for video conferencing.
Would I be better off buying 2 old B&W G3's and dropping fast G3 upgrades in them instead?
I would need to get an ATI card with video out, or a VGA converter, so the moniter could hooked up to the projectors in the conference rooms for large viewing. I figure 2 iSight camera's, or cheap used Mini-DV camera's with firewire will work ok for the video aspect. Also, being a conference room, I might need to wire up some better sound recording system, since iSight isn't all that good for large rooms. using a Mini-DV camera may be better, as I could easily hook up external mics.
Anyone using a bare-bones iChatAV setup? Help me do this on the cheap using macs. I don't want any more PC's in there!
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