Skype hack enables higher resolution video calls
By Conrad Quilty-Harper 
posted Feb 11th 2007 4:55AM
posted Feb 11th 2007 4:55AM
The majority of Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick's vision of the future from 2001: A Space Odyssey has not yet been realized: popping over to the moon to have a look at the most recently unearthed alien artifact is not a common practice in the late-noughties, although one technology demonstrated in a minor scene of this science fiction epic has caught on. Video calling, once the preserve of video phones owners with expensive ISDN lines, has now become a day-to-day activity thanks to cheap broadband and a multitude of platforms that have made video chatting easy and affordable. Unfortunately, due to a variety of limitations -- lack of bandwidth, slow computers, poor quality webcams -- the majority of video conferencing solutions are of the 320 x 240 / 15 fps ilk: not something we want to hear in the era of HD. For those that do have sufficient bandwidth, a fast enough computer, and a capable webcam, there's an experimental hack for Skype that allows you to increase the resolution from the ancient 320 x 240 standard up to a much more tolerable 640 x 480. The hack only works one way, so users on both ends will have to apply it in order to see each other's zits with increased clarity. If we had a way of routing live high definition video through our PC, we'd attempt to increase the resolution even further, although that would of course require the help of something we've always found it hard to acquire: friends.[Via MAKE]
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Uh, the 'hack' comes from Skype themselves.
what if i dont use builtin isight? i use external isight, do you think it would still work?
It's FireWire, isn't it? So I would assume so.
There is no "config.xml" in my skype directory...(windowsxp, skype v3.0.0.190)
It's in your AppData directory (usually C:\Documents and Settings\\Application Data\Skype\. You can get to it a lot faster by simply typing %appdata% in an address bar in Explorer and then browse to it.
I'm trying to get a his res solution to skype using Vista..can anyone help?
I don't have a webcam, but what if you increase the numbers even more?
Jupiter.
Who's the Euro dork?
Just the thing for head office to torment a poor employee with for just another management meeting. Torment by star trek in our lifetime.
www.jerkbossesihaveknown.com
What? No HD?