Creative Labs WebCam Live!

Rating:
Summary: good deal,neat design,made in Korea
Review: actually you can manually adjust brightness and contrastness, as well as gamma correction.
good picture quality,
a little bit slow caused by data conjestion ? via LAN connection,but where you can find USB2.0 at this price?
btw, I believe Koreans' made after I bought 3 iRivers MP3 players.

Rating:
Summary: Great for seeing loved ones.
Review: I bought two of these cameras, one for myself and one for my parents that live in CA (I'm in WA). I moved away recently and wanted to see them more often than I can afford to fly. This camera does a great job and the mic works well too.

A previous reviewer said the video was blurry and slow, I am using MSN messenger and the problem is the broadband connection. When I used the camera on my home LAN to have a video conference between my laptop and desktop the image was great. Clear, smooth very little delay. When I use the camera to talk to my parents there is lag and fast motion causes blurring. To me this is acceptable. If I wanted to pay hundreds of dollars for a business class connection the image would be better but thats too much money.

The voice communication is pretty much equivalent to phone. Almost no delay and very easy to hear. As far as the echo the previous reviewer mentioned his speakers are probably turned up too loud. Every time you hear someone call into a radio station and the DJ tells them to turn down their stereo it is because their speakers are up too high and are causing an echo. If you use the mic in conjuction with headphones it works great.

For $50 I couldn't be happier with this product. MSN integrates flawlessly with it and so far it is all free. The voice quality is close to a dedicated phone line and cuts down on my long distance calls.

Rating:
Summary: good deal
Review: I have been looking for such a webcam for a long time because I can't find a cheap product with good quality and brand.
This webcam is what I wanted although it is USB 1.1, but it doesn't influnce the speed even when I used it to talk with my friend in China. Furthermore,I get my order in only 2 days with free shipping. Easy to install and use. And I love Creative very much because it's rebate probably working. @^:^@

The only weak point of this webcam is when I set up the "banding filter" at "outdoor" model, the webcam seems to be a little dark although in this setting will make the motion without delay. So, I give it 4 stars. Hope it can help!

Rating:
Summary: Blurry, dark, unresponsive video. Software hogs resources.
Review: Maybe my expectations are too high for what webcams are capable of, but the video output from this thing is pathetic! I bought a webcam in 1998, and promptly tossed it. I would have thought that by now, they'd be more usable.

This camera has 30 frames per second, which most of them have, so I thought it would be ok. When I open my mouth or move my head even a little bit, the video shows trails and gets all blurry.

I bought it because it has a seperate mike, and it's got very strong pickup even sitting on my desk. But it also has a loud echo.

Because the frames are weirdly slow, and the mic is in real-time, this product is totally unusable. It's just too annoying to watch.

Also, the software completely bogs down my fast new computer. It's awful.

I'm sending it back.


Rating:
Summary: Comment on Creative Labs WebCam Live!
Review: This is the third Creative Labs webcam I have bought. Compared to the previous ones (a first generation webcam and a more recent Pro eX), this one produces better pictures - brighter and better color rendering. It works well in low light environment. So as far as performance is concerned, I am pretty happy. However, if you're looking for a webcam that can be SECURELY mounted on your laptop, this one is definitely not for you. This webcam does NOT have a clip or a snap-on mechanism. It does allow you to put the webcam on laptop computer's display panel without falling off if the computer is on a leveled surface without any kind of movement. Even that is little bit shaky if the dispaly panel is thin (like my Dell Inspiron 700m). I give this webcam a 4 star instead of 5 mainly for this reason.

A note about installation (Windows XP with SP2):
This is not a big deal but I thought I would just share with everyone in case someone gets confused. Like other Creaive Labs stuff I have bought before (webcams and MP3 player), the installation procedure in the manual doesn't quite match what you actually experience. The manual indicates after you finish installing the software (drivers and apps), then you plug in the webcam and Windows will discover the hardware and you go from there. In reality,you will be asked to plug in the webcam before you finish the software installation and you never go through the Windows hardware discovery process.