Yahoo Messenger ! Missed Feature ?

sh_am2
Originally uploaded by praldoe.

Hi Reader,

U "Pradeep what's on this post ?"
Me "Something interesting"
U "Ah you are not the one to decide what is interesting to us"
Me "Well , I am pretty sure this would"
U "Come on prove it !"
Me "Simply read the following"

I usually visit an internet cafe/browsing centre near my house and due to frequent visits the owner of the cafe is more or less a fren to me. We keep sharing gyaan about computers and advancement in technology ...

A week before when I was walking out ... he stopped me and I could see some excitement in his face.
"I came across something interesting when I was chatting with my cousin in Holland" he said and continued ...."I wanted to show my new born daughter to my cousin over the webcam while chatting in Yahoo Messenger and he could see the TV channels which was relayed from my TV tuner card instead of our faces in his webcam window."

Holy cow ! I could not believe it and I told him I think it is indeed interesting and I shall have a deeper look at it this weekend. So the weekend is here so is this post !

__Yahoo Messenger ! Missed feature ? ____

Yahoo ! I reproduced the scenario in his own internet cafe with two different machines and I bet you all that you too can reproduce and here is the help you need.

Observation : If a PC has a TV tuner card attached to it and Yahoo Messenger ( Beta ) , your friends elsehwere can see the same channel you are tuned into.

Pre-condition :
1) Your PC has a TV tuner card and a cable connection where you are able to watch the TV channels.
2) Your PC has a broadband internet connection with Yahoo Messenger with Voice ( Beta ) installed and running.
3) Your PC has a webcam.

Steps to Reproduce :
1) Log on to Yahoo Messenger ! ( of course with your username and password )
2) Go to Preferences in Yahoo Messenger and select to view the options available in Webcam tab.
3) On finding 'Camera Source' radio button , click to see the options it displays.
4) Step 3 could lead you to a list - which has a) Your webcam details b) TV Tuner card details.
5) Select the option (b) or TV tuner card as 'Camera Source'.
6) Invite a friend who is online ( or invisible ) to view your webcam.

Result : Your friend is able to view the TV channel you are tuned into.

Primary Analysis : ( with my setup )
1) The frame rate is very less to see a good picture quality.
2) Image size is 320 X 240.
3) Audio data can similarly be routed over to a friends PC.

Advanced Analysis :

1) Today's boom is on iP TV / Set top boxes and Yahoo ! itself could venture into something like this through their existing Messenger by providing a robust codec.
2) Products available in the market, selling for $250 could go bersek.
3) As the bandwidth and system speed ( CPU clock / RAM ) is increased a better quality output can be an obvious expectation.

End user benefit :

1) You can relay your friends who are at another part of the world , a local channel , they could be missing.
2) Without any investment people across the globe can get connected to their local channels.

__ end of __ Yahoo Messenger ! Missed feature ? ___

Now there are two possibilities -

1) You say " Wow ! thats interesting man !".
2) You say " Nope , it didnt interest me anyway".

Whatever , I am happy that you reached the end of this post. See U again chick !

"Eating chicken to test whether it has bird flu is a bad test(taste) case"

Thanks and Regards

Pradeep Soundararajan
pradeep.srajan@gmail.com

Disclaimer : This post reflects my personal opinion and observation and the points mentioned above are my own analysis and has no organization or anyone else bias or involvement with it. This post is my own learning as a tester that a better feature could be embedded into a product and testing could bring out without terming it as a bug.This post is also with no intention of affecting any organization's business or market.I could be completely wrong due to lack of knowledge on the products i know/work/have seen any such phenomenon and I am or completely not responsible if at all it creates any impact.