Early Internet Video
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CU-SeeMe

From wikipedia…

 

CU-SeeMe is an internet video-conferencing client written by students at Cornell University. It was first developed for the Macintosh in 1992 and later for the Windows platform in 1994. Originally it was video-only with audio added in 1994 for the Macintosh and 1995 for Windows. CU-SeeMe's audio came from Maven, an audio only client developed at the University of Illinois.

The commercial licensing rights were bought by White Pine Software in December 1998 and the product was then released a commercial product. Unfortunately, White Pine Software ignored the original hobby market of CU-SeeMe users and attempted to compete against hardware assisted video-conferencing companies. They were too early for acceptance as audio/video quality was an issue at the time (excessive latency) and thus the product was only useful to hobbyists.

White Pine Software was subsequently bought by First Virtual Communications and at some point the client was renamed simply CU and was made part of a fee-based video chat service called CUworld. The client evolved further, was renamed "Click To Meet" and became the major offering of First Virtual.

First Virtual filed for bankruptcy on January 20, 2005 and the assets were acquired by RADvision on March 15, 2005. RADvision continues to offer the product through clicktomeet.com.

There is still a small but active community of users who continue to use cu-seeme. Although there had been no releases of software from the various incarnations of White Pine since around 2000, there are freeware alternatives available for both Windows and Macintosh platforms. A search of the web will quickly locate the CU-SeeMe "reflectors" that are still operational.

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Some radio stations report that they used this to deliver audio over the net.

 

I have no personal experience or involvement in such use, but have seen it reported.

 

Will R


 CuSeeMe worked pretty well for what it offered at the time (a reflector
that could actually handle load on a 386, etc.). It actually got me into
streaming :-). I had started using Linux SLS (anyone remember that?) in
1992-ish and around 1993 my university wanted a reflector
coded/installed. Ah those were the days :)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CU-SeeMe

And Vic/Rat/MBone at around the same time (some in development a few
years before that).

I wouldn't be too hard on CuSeeMe, we have them to thank in part for
IPTV as it is today.

Cheers
Kon

 

 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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