Customer Reviews

D-Link i2Eye DVC-1000 10/100TX Broadband VideoPhone

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

The video quality is a big issue with us since it is video conferencing and the whole point is to see the other person in good quality and full motion. This product was very easy to setup because of the setup wizard and the documentaion that comes with it. After the couple minutes of setup I was ready to make a call to my friend who has one as well. The first call was a complete eye opener.

I was able to see and hear him so very clearly (with cordless phone attached to the unit) and it was almost too good to be true. I could see him so well it was almost like I was there in his living room. well not exactly, but it was like there was a TV camera in his living room and I was watching him talk to me. One of the best parts about this whole thing was that this call was totally free to make. Except for of course the initial cost of the unit and the monthy broadband bill, but I was paying that bill every month anyways.

When friends/company would come over they would see this little box on top of my 26 inch TV and ask what it was. So I'd call my friend and show them. They would instantly want one once they saw it in action. I've probably influenced about 3-4 people who eventually bought one of these and now we have a little network of people who we know that we can call and who can call us.

This little box that sits on our TV and only needs a remote to use it a beautiful thing. Once everyone gets one, or at least all the people I call, I believe that this will replace our regular phones (at least when calling each other), long distance, or local, its all the same.

Usage:
My family and I recently moved from back east to California and we are already missing friends and family. My son uses this to call his girlfriend (who also has an i2eye) on the East Coast. He ends up talking to her for hours, and since it cost nothing to call I don't mind. Plus our phone line is still open and now they can see each other face to face. He says that's the only way he calls her now.
The rest of the family uses this to call family back east.
We bought one for my parents and my wife's parents. My parents get a total kick out of being able to see their grandkids and they've all ready told me they can see them growing. Again all these calls are free because it uses our DSL connection.

Technical
The setup of this VideoPhone wasn't bad, but it did involve some port forwarding in our router. After setting ours up here at home (about 10-15 minutes) I was able to setup other family members' VideoPhone in about 5-10 minutes. Forwarding ports on the router is very easy to do, you just need to follow the instructions.
Making a call is as easy as dialing a phone number with a remote control. When you setup this i2eye you can enter whatever phone number you want to be associated with and all people have to do is dial that number to call your Video Phone. If you don't know the phone number you can dial by IP address, but most people don't know their IP address let alone someone else's IP address.
Once you have it setup with your family in the speed dial you don't have to remember anything except who you want to call and just select their name from a list you made. Very easy.
The video quality on these are surprisingly good. Sometimes you see some blurriness when there is fast movement, but it is nothing you can't handle. It is a small glitch that is easily overlooked seeing that you get to see and hear who you are talking to right on your TV. The audio quality is just like a phone when you plug in a phone to the back of this Video Phone. Plugging in a phone to the back of this device turns off the microphone and lets you use it like a phone. So we just sit back and talk on the cordless phone and watch on the TV the video. It makes it feel like you are on the phone as usual but you get a camera in their home.
This VideoPhone upgrades itself when there is new firmware, which is very convenient.

Overall
This Video Phone is a fun toy in our home that doesn't need maintenance, extra fees, or new hardware. All you need is a DSL or Cable connection, a TV, and if you have a home network you need a long enough cable, or wireless device to connect the i2eye to your network. The quality is great, the ease of use allows our kids to use it unsupervised, and all calls are free since it does use the Internet.

I would recommend this to people who have family that is too far to visit from time to time, or people who just want to jump into the future and make video phone calls.

The only thing I wish this could do is to call real phones. But that is wishful thinking and someone would find a way to charge you for calls if this actually could. So for now you can call other people who have an i2eye, and other video conferencing devices that use the H.323 protocol like someone who is using Microsoft net meeting or the like.

Bottom Line: Get one if you have the use for it, you and whom ever you call will greatly enjoy it. It is definitly fun to use and a sure conversation piece. Everyone who comes over and sees it wants to see it in action, then they want one for themselves.

I bought a pair of this vidoe phone and fall in love with it.

I am relocating to another city. Really missing my sons since we could not have the whole family moved until summer. So I decided to buy a pair of i2eye.

We ended up with turn them on whenever we have a chance. My 6 year old also loves it. Most time I call, he will shut down his cartoon TV and jump up and down for a few minutes. Compare to a regular phone, he would just talk with me one sentence.

Something nice to have (not in the set yet): autofocusing or remote focusing. S-Video output to TV set (so higher resolution).

We are in the process of buying more for my parents and my wife's parents...

I get a nice crisp picture on my TV when using this videophone. The setup of this was easier than setting up a computer to be on your network and configuring a video phone is a lot more exciting then a boring computer. I have some networking experience, but I feel confident that inexperienced people can set this up with little to no trouble as well.

I highly suggest connecting a phone to the back of this because the audio quality is way better than the speaker/mic portion of this device. Getting a good video frame rate is essential and depending on your Internet connection speed you can usually configure the i2eye unit to perform best in the setup wizard. I personally had to change the speed setting to get the best frame rate, but it only took a couple tries to get it right.

I am impressed with this little box and recommend that if you are thinking about getting one, or two, to just go ahead and do it. It is well worth it if you make a lot of calls and would love to see some video along with your call.

I brought this device because I needed to communicate with my school. I am working on an advanced degree and often I'm not in the area when classes are in session. I was told to buy a H323 (if you don't know what that is don't worry) compatible device so that could communicate with the rest of the university. I shopped around and this was by far the cheapest. I brought this device and when I went to set it up the next month, the IT department when crazy. They wouldn't let me use this device because of all of the problems that they had with Dlink products in the past - this one in particular. I ended up buying a ViaVideo II by Polycom and gave this one to my parents.

Let me start by saying that even though they show how simple this is to configure, if you do not know how to open up ports in your firewall/router you should not by this product. Furthermore, must people have dynamic IP address so that when you call someone, it will not be the same number every time. If you do not know how to find your IP address this is not a product for you. I use a dynamic forwarding website and place the camera in the DMZ so that there are no firewall issues. I also turn of the camera when not in use, but there are no configurable items without the remote control so there is no hacking issue. If you don't understand this paragraph then this not a product for you. It is possible for someone to set this up for you, router, ports, dynamic DNS, and all and then you will just need to know the IP address of the person that you are calling.

The video on this device is much better then a web cam, but I was very disappointed by the resolution. It is nice not to have to be tied to your computer to make a video call. You can use the wireless version of the product or using a wireless bridge and buy the cheaper version without wireless and the video will be about the same.

All together, it is nice to use the product without have to use the computer, but for a much better picture, the Via Video II beats this product hands down.

I like calling my family a lot more now that I can actually see and hear them. Plus all it costs to call my family across the state is my normal broadband internet bill. All I have to do now is select another video source with my tv remote, pick up the i2eye remote and speed dial my family. They pick up and suddenly I can see them live and on TV. It's amazing! I talk on the phone a lot anyhow, so I have my own wireless headset phone so I can wonder around the house and talk on the phone. Well i just plug in my wireless headset and suddenly I am talking with my family just like on the phone, but they also appear on my TV. I can't get over how cool this is for me. I get to see my little brothers and sisters a lot more often now.
Words can't describe how useful and worth the price this videophone is. bottom line is that this is fun to use, easy to use, and the quality of it makes it worth the price.

I really wanted to like this gadget, but I've ultimately been disappointed. The idea is COOL, being able to see your family and carry on a FREE Internet phone conversation with them, and the price is much less than other videophone solutions out there. Alas, there are a few problems still to be worked out with this device.

Here's the saga of trying to just get the device to work with my network setup. I tried calling Dlink (the i2eye manufacturer), Linksys (for my router setup), Comcast (broadband connection) and SunRocket (VOIP) for support on this issue. I eventually got the device to work connecting to my parents' wireless version of the i2eye (which I setup through a USR wireless broadband router by opening the required ports) by connecting my i2eye (the wired ethernet version) directly to my cable modem (without my Linksys broadband router or SunRocket VOIP box in the equation). I then tested various configurations until I was able to determine that the Linksys router (model WRTGS) was not forwarding ports correctly (I HAD properly configured port forwarding). Linksys tech support tried but failed to help me out. I swapped routers with my girlfriend who had a Dlink router and the problem went away (after also configuring port forwarding). Would have been nice if Dlink could have told me when I called them for support that my router wasn't compatible with their device (though it's possible that my Linksys router has a "broken" port forwarding feature). I also had to forward ports through my VOIP box which the SunRocket tech support people quickly told me how to do. So I eventually got the damn thing working after a month and a half of trying. Of course that is two weeks after the standard return policy of ANTonline expires (who I bought the device from through Amazon).

Now to performance. Even when the i2eye is connected directly to my broadband cable modem my framerate never rises above 5 frames per second. That's both for the transmitted and received data stream. (On my parents' end I have to connect wirelessly through their wireless router as their TV is too far from their cable modem.) I've tried tweaking the "speed" settings on the i2eye to adjust the amount of data the device is configured to send and receive, but I never got an improvement. Dlink advertises that you can get up to 30 frames per second using a high quality broadband connection (like mine and my parents'). I haven't tested my broadband connection's total upload and download speed because I simply don't know how (probably need some third party utility program). Regardless I SHOULD be getting at least 500kbps upload speed and at least 1Mbps download speed (at both mine and my parent's end) as that is typical of cable broadband connections. Also the image quality from the i2eye's "lens" and CCD is horrendous. The brightness, contrast and general overall "sharpness" of the image is lousy. That's simply not acceptable. You can get better framerates (along with much better image quality) from a good webcam using one of the "messenger" applications out there. Which is what I'm going to explore doing next.

I'm going to attempt to return the devices now (both mine and my parents' i2eye) through ANTonline and Amazon with the argument that the i2eye devices don't perform as advertised and that I'm "late" returning them because of the difficulty in testing the devices (you have to coordinate with the people at the other end of the connection to determine if your own configuration is working). I'll try to post an update to this review with the results of that attempt.

(Update: I was able to return the unit I bought from Amazon with few questions asked. I was NOT able to return the unit bought from ANTOnline and wound up selling it on EBay for half the price I paid for it. Lesson: if you have doubts but still want to try it, buy through Amazon.)

Unless they can improve framerate throughput through some kind of data compression technology upgrade, I can't recommend this device to anyone. Less critical improvements would be a better quality camera (and microphone) onboard and better support for setting up the devices (a dedicated i2eye server you can connect to test your i2eye configuration settings) including a list of supported and non-supported routers.

Hope this helps someone else avoid the headaches and hassles I've been subjected to by this device.

Andrew

My daughter bought this for me so I could see my grand children who live in other states. I have spent 6 days and almost $450 trying to get it to work. I even hired a computer repairman who charged me $184 and could not get it working. If it was not a gift I would send it back to get my money back. I called the help line, lots of times and usually got someone who didn't speak English very well. They would end up telling me it was a problem with the router. Then I would call the router and they would tell me it is a problem with the D-Link. No one wants to take responsibility for getting it working. I even went on the support page on the internet and read pages of things that could be wrong. Tried them all in six days and I still don't have it working and has cost me alot of time and "money". Good Luck if you buy it you will need it.

This little D-link box is reasonably simple to configure and use. Even using fast broadband service at both ends, audio quality was rather poor (I suspect the microphone is not very good) and the video was awful mainly because of the camera's extremely poor quality. I wonder what possessed D-Link to fit such a device with a camera that's about the same level of quality as a $15 USB webcam. Under ordinary interior lighting conditions, it is impossible to get a clear, naturally colored picture: all you will get is a noisy, muddy mess. Of course the lens quality matches the image sensor: it's awful.
This is a real shame, because D-Link almost made a pretty good product here. The user interface and configuration are reasonably simple and well explained in the manual, and the performance passable. Unfortunately, the built-in microphone and camera are so bad they make an otherwise fairly decent product unusable.

If you are not an IT person you will need help setting up .Using D-Link customer service is a chore due to language issues .I bought the video phone to contact my son in Taiwan and it never would connect ==D-Link HELP LINE ?? ==could not understand why and were of no help what so ever .I could reach the test location but that was it .=Complete waste of money !!!