What is a good video conferencing solution for a small business. Need to organize a meeting with 15-20 participants. The video stream just needs to flow from the meeting organizer to the other people it does not need to go both ways. (audio probably would need to go both ways)

5/14/2010 5:45:51 PM

meeting organizer using a webcam or showing desktop?

http://www.ustream.tv/ might be an option

5/14/2010 6:11:23 PM

skype

5/14/2010 6:30:33 PM

^ how do you make camera a stream to all of the clients, we can only get chat to work.

5/14/2010 6:34:16 PM

Are you doing video out and need audio back? Or just one way communication?

I still use Windows Media Encoder at least once per week for stuff like this. Just give them an IP address and you're good to go. Or send it in an email as an MMS link. However if you need audio back you may want to try something else as the media player will buffer 10-15 seconds and there will be a huge delay.

5/16/2010 9:53:14 PM

5/17/2010 1:36:03 PM

[Edited on May 17, 2010 at 2:16 PM. Reason : superbigpic -qfred]

5/17/2010 1:37:54 PM

^ I guess you missed the inexpensive and small business parts of his query

5/17/2010 8:56:40 PM

webex works pretty good for this sort of thing as well.

Video quality all depends on how good your camera is, and it combines the presentation/conferencing aspects in one solution.

I think you can get a free trial, so doesnt get much cheaper than free.

5/18/2010 6:06:14 AM

^OH SNAP.

They can conference from Blackberries. Since everyone in the office has a BB... well... you may have a compelling product there. How is your experience with them?

5/18/2010 9:52:53 AM

gotomeeting is also an option.

5/18/2010 10:07:52 AM

^^

both robster and I use webex several times a day. I know I love it for conferencing. We may be a bit biased since we work for Cisco, who owns webex.

There are other similar solutions out there, some that are free. Hell, skype may be an option for you.

5/18/2010 12:02:57 PM

^^ came in here to post that.

5/18/2010 12:03:37 PM

TinyChat, TokBox, DimDim

all awesome

5/18/2010 12:30:54 PM

I use webex a couple times a week.

I have held meetings with up to 300 individuals connected, and it works...not the greatest I'm sure, but not bad at all. Very easy to set up a meeting and send out the meeting info to participants.

We have a lot of problems using VOIP, as the quality is sometimes bad, but if using the call-in number, it's just fine.

5/18/2010 12:52:53 PM

We've got a bunch of rooms set up specifically for VTC using polycom codecs that run through our polycom bridge..

But we also use Webex as a simpler web conferencing solution when just desktop content and audio need to be shared. It is easy and works well. I actually prefer it to real video conferencing. No add-ons for the end user to try to download.

5/18/2010 2:14:05 PM