[videian28]

anyone have any info on this, is the lag to great? any info is appreciated, thinking of hooking up the inlaws

[videian28]

bump with the hopes that someone has a bit of info

[tooki]

I speak from pure speculation here, based on my understanding of things -- I've never used satellite internet myself.

I would expect it to be rather frustrating. Satellite has exceedingly high latency: often a whole second or more (that's about 100 times slower than cable or DSL, and 10 times slower than a 56K modem). So it won't feel "natural", which is one of the things that normally sets iChat AV apart (on low-latency broadband, iChat AV has very low latency).

You know how on TV news they have reporters all over the globe, live via satellite? Notice how they have to leave a pause after talking for the person on the other end to respond? That's the latency at work.

So I would say that it would probably work, but would feel very unnatural -- don't expect it to "feel" like a phone call.

tooki

[videian28]

That was my thoughts also, however the pic of the guy using iChat on a plane (was on apples website I believe) kinda threw me off...oh well

[ghporter]

Advertising doesn't always have to be truly representative of actual product performance-maybe the guy in the ad likes waiting a LONG time for the distant end to hear him and reply.

The extreme latency of satellite internet connections makes them a very poor choice for many people's interests; games, chat, video, all suffer horrendously. And from experience with actual satellite phone service, I can tell you that it SUCKS to have to wait that long to hear the other person say "uh huh." Chat would be worse!