Video Chat 101 | Video Chat News and Reviews

Who Has The Best Free Video Chat Room?

A lot of readers have been asking my opinion on which video chat program or community has the best free video chat room ?.

The answer may surprise some of you. Many would expect me to say the free yahoo messenger as it is well… free! . The problem with Yahoo messenger chat rooms is they are becoming more and more a frustrating experience, we will be revisiting the yahoo messenger review in the not to distant future and adjusting its rating accordingly. The main problem is for every room you wish to enter you have to go through a frustrating verification process. The purpose of this process is to ensure the user is not a spam bot. Unfortunately the bots are too smart for this and the rooms are still flooded with spam. You will often go through the process to find the room is full (most likely with 90% spam bots promoting sex websites) and you have to go through the process again.

So what do we think is the winner of the best free video chat room? ….  Drum roll …. Paltalk Scene!. I hear some of you cry Paltalk Scene is not free…. well it is in its limited form, you can sign up for Paltalk Scene, get yourself a black nickname and get chatting, no spam bots here, just thousands of users interacting with each other. You can later move up to the cheaply priced paid version if you enjoy your stay. Whether you want to discuss political issues, find yourself new friends or get naughty in the adult areas you wont be disappointed.

Get Paltalk for the best free video chat room without giving your credit card!

Paltalk | Quantum of Solace Director Video Chat

Paltalk have announced as a part of their on going celebrity guests, Marc foster director of the new James Bond 007 movie, Quantum of Solace, will partake in a video chat session which everyone can join in for free.

The director of movies such as Monster Ball will be in Studio B -  Hollywood Now room. It will be a great chance for Bond fans to find out the goss of the much anticipated movie as well as become familiar with the excellent video chat program (rated number 1 in reviews so far on videochatblog.net).

Paltalk is the largest voice and video chat service. Claim your free trial of Paltalk Scene for video messaging and chat.

• DATE : Thursday, October 23
• TIME : 5:00pm EST
• ROOM : Studio B - Hollywood Now

We will continue to bring news of celebrity chat events hosted on Paltalk as they come to hand. If you would like to join in on this chat you can get a free trial of Paltalk Scene

Camfrog Beta Windows Mobile Version Released

Camfrog have announced they are releasing a beta version of camfrog that will operate on Windows enabled mobile devices.

Bear in mind this is a beta release and is likely to have some teething problems, If you have any problems check out the help area at the new website which deals specifically with Camfrog mobile, you can find the site here

All we can say at videochatblog.net is this is a very, very cool development and be sure to look for the reiview in the not to distant future B-)

Download Camfrog for Windows Mobile Beta

Download Camfrog 5.1

Camfrog 5.1 Update | Camfrog 5.1.129 (windows)

Camfrog have announced an update to Camfrog 5.1 this update fixes a problem experienced mainly by free users when engaging in one on one video chat sessions, if you are not experiencing difficulties with one on one video using Camfrog 5.1 then there is no need to update. You can read more at the The Official Camfrog Blog

For those of you who haven’t tried the excellent Camfrog Video chat Community yet, head on over and Read our Camfrog 5.1 review

Download Camfrog 5.1.129

Download Camfrog 5.1

Video Chat Review : Skype

The biggest player in the fast growing and increasingly lucrative VOIP (voice over internet protocol) field is without a doubt a name everyone knows Skype. Skype is used by millions of users spread across the globe. You may be surprised to know that the people behind Skype were also the folks behind the development of the somewhat frowned upon file sharing application Kazza.

Skype acts and looks for the most part like any other instant messaging program, chatting to a friend on your friends list is simply a matter of selecting their name and clicking on the green “call” icon. Once you are connected to your chat partner you can communicate via chat, video or text, or indeed all of them combined. You can play games from a large games library, install one of many plugins to enhance your experience or simply chat to friends, family or work colleagues.

Video: The video component of Skype is impressive to say the least, dependent as always on the quality of hardware the video sender is using Skype can deliver breathtaking images, that appear to suffer less from artifact loss than many other video chat solutions on the market.

Audio: The audio on Skype is also very clear although it can from time to time suffer from audio delay, in particular when using the voip to voip phone feature.

In addition to the video chat quality’s of Skype, chatting online via video or voip calls or even cheap local and international calls make Skype a must have. In fact the features of Skype are so numerous it will require a second (and possibly third look) into just what this awesome program can deliver.

Check out the Great offers at Skype’s clearance sale

The only negatives I have come across using Skype is it doesn’t seem to be totally Windows Vista friendly (I’m constantly reseting the audio in and out), then again this is nothing new as vista doesn’t seem to be compatible with numerous applications, and it does require a nice chunk of cpu usage which can slow older systems down. As for dial up users I can only imagine the program would be next to useless for the video side of things.

Readers of my previous reviews will know how much importance I place on the more community aspects of video chatting and sadly with Skype there are no multiuser chat room servers that users can check into to find someone to talk to, you can indeed launch a conference and have a few of your buddy listed friends chatting via video at the same time, but there is no faculty to meet random folks and make new friends, one can only hope that the rumors of chat rooms on the horizon is a reality for future releases

Having said this, using something like yahoo to make new friends, then moving them on to your Skype list is an option that is worth the time and effort as Skype is a very slick, stable and fun piece of software you will love using

Skype looks to be around for the long haul and as long as it doesn’t become bloat ware (its already extremely resource intensive) it will be exciting to see what features are added to it and how the application develops from here. Best of all aside from the extremely cheap rates for placing pc to home phone calls, Skype is free to use.

Click on the logo to take you to Skype download!

Rating: 4/5

Camfrog 4.x No Longer Supported

As was mentioned in the previous article Camfrog 3.x users will now find themselves blocked from connecting to Camfrog servers. Similarly Camfrog has now announced on its official blog that Camfrog 4.x users will now no longer have access to the servers.

As a result of blocking Camfrog 4.x and 3.x, Camfrog 5.1 users should notice a much enhanced experience as it will take a significant load of their cpu performance as well as a decrease in the amount of bandwidth needed.

Users experiencing problems upon upgrading to Camfrog 5.1 can report them directly to Camfrog here

Read more here Camfrog 4.x No Longer Supported

You can upgrade to Camfrog 5.1 here Download Camfrog 5.1

Camfrog 3.x No Longer Supported

Camfrog has announced the discontinuation of Camfrog 3.X in order for bandwidth and resources to be streamlined. Since the release of Camfrog 5.x users viewing camfrog 3.X and viewing Camfrog 5.X users had the effect of doubling the bandwidth being used and cpu load of the 5.X users as the 5.X has to send out a 5.X stream as well as a 3.X stream.

This effect has also placed increased bandwidth load on the servers and by upgrading to the 5.X client there will be an all round improvement for users and servers alike.

For this reason all 3.X users must upgrade to 5.X and Camfrog 3.X users will find themselves blocked when trying to log on to the server.

The Camfrog blog has also advised in coming weeks support for Camfrog 4.X will end and it will also be blocked.

Read more here Camfrog 3.x No Longer Supported

You can upgrade to Camfrog 5.1 here Download Camfrog 5.1

Windows Live Messenger - Review

Windows Live Messenger, the latest incarnation of what was known as msn messenger, is possibly the most popular Instant Messenger if we go simply by weight of number of users. Due to the large amounts of production resources (time and money) that have been able to be funneled into Windows Live Messenger you would expect it to be a great piece of software, which for the most part it is.

From a video chat point of view, Windows Live Messenger almost has it all.  With true live video and fast frame rates Windows Live messenger is arguably the best video experience in a program of this type. You can pc to pc call with your friends by simply clicking their user name and inviting them to view your cam. Windows Live Messenger doesn’t appear to be as “buggy” as Yahoo! Messenger in that the video doesn’t appear to get interrupted, stutter or drop out as much as its main rival yahoo does.

Windows Live Messenger video “windows” are re sizable and like yahoo have a “sticky” feature so you can have a small video window open, always on top of all other windows. This enables you to watch video while you work or do other tasks on your pc without having to swap windows all the time.

So why did I say “almost has it all” is because it is lacking one very important feature, well rather it has removed one very important feature!. The feature I’m referring to is chat rooms. Back in the day when Windows Live Messenger was still known under the title “msn messenger” it had the best multi-user voice and video enabled chat rooms that we have seen to date in a free service. The chat rooms were bustling with a huge array of users from all walks of life, you name it you could find it in terms of subjects discussed in user created chat rooms.

I hear you ask, “so why did msn get rid of chatrooms?” the answer sadly is due to the amount of abuse that was going, whilst we acknowledge adult, cybersex activities in chat rooms is a big component of online chat, there is no place for exposing minors or even subjecting those who would rather not be subjected to nudity and adult themes. The job of policing these rooms and the threat of possible litigation was just to large and Microsoft removed the rooms totally.

It is sad that rater than try to fix them they opted for the easier option of shutting them down and while Yahoo Messenger chat rooms are now over run with spam at least they haven’t removed them altogether (although unfortunately for similar reasons they removed user created rooms).

I believe the messenger program that finds the solution to this problem and brings back user defined video chat rooms will ultimately come out on top. Whilst its great to be able to talk with those you know, its alot of fun to be able to meet someone in a chat room and instantly see who they are.

For this reason subscription programs like Paltalk are becoming more and more popular, users can create a room relating to whatever subject they want.

Windows Live Messenger has interoperability with yahoo users, so you can talk with them without having to have both applications open.

Currently Windows Live Messenger is a leader in the free video chat enabled Instant Messengers pack, they loose some points for no chat room but pick up some for the excellent quality of video and voice along with a huge user base.

Download Windows Live Messenger Here

Rating: 4/5