Story: Skype U-turns on 'second class status' video

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Good news, but revisionist history

It will indeed be good news if Skype restores the ability to have higher resolution video with cameras other than the three chosen Logitech models. However, there is a good deal of "revisionist history" and covering of tracks in their statement. The first public beta 3.6 release came on out October 10th, and the discussion in the Skype User Forum of the higher quality video started the same day. That discussion went on for six weeks, and several Skype Staff members were involved. It became steadily more heated as it became obvious that the users pleas for Skype not to take this capability away were not going to be heeded. For Skype to now say "we were surprised at the reaction of some of these users when the option was removed" is disingenuous at best. It is also misleading for them to say "the quality was unreliable"; as they note, some people could get better resolution and some could not, but when it worked it worked very well, and very consistently. Most importantly, though, they repeat their elitist attitude with the statement "Any benefits of the removed option pale in comparison with High Quality Video". There was never any argument about this in the Skype User Forums. I personally said on numerous occasions, the High Definition Video is obviously better, but why does that mean that those who are not blessed with one of the "anointed" Logitech webcams and a dual-core CPU are not allowed to get the most that they can out of their webcams?

It certainly will be good if and when Skype actually does reinstate this option. It would be even better if they put it in with a reasonable user control, rather than dismissing it as a "garage hack". After all, they put it in there themselves to begin with!

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