Questions - technical trivia

It largely depends on the speed (also called bandwidth) of your internet connection. If it is 64 kbps or more, then you should be able to enjoy high quality internet phonecalls. But, if you plan to make conference calls (with more than two participants simultaneously) then the connection needs to be fatter.

Any PC will do, provided it has a CPU running at 133 MHz (megahertz) or more.

First of all, you need a working connection to the internet. Secondly, the computer must have a soundcard. Thirdly, we highly recommend you to use a headset (earphones with a microphone) since this will eliminate echo during the call. If you use speakers instead of the headset, the person you talk to might feel disrupted by hearing his or her voice on your speakers (loop effect). Headsets are great also because you can move around more freely.

All Microsoft (TM) operating systems from the last half-decade are compatible with TiVi Phone, even Windows (TM) 98. We will have more news for users of other operating systems at the end of the year.

We are working on it. We already have a SIP softphone commandline version for Linux.

Yes, but browsing the internet and talking over TiVi phone simultaneously might slow each other down and decrease the voice quality of your phonecalls. And yet, while none of you is talking during a phonecall, the bandwidth quickly becomes available to other tasks (e.g., surfing, e-mail).

From the user's point of view, it is just like a regular telephone, but the transmission channels are established over the internet. The sounds of your voice are handled as digitized and compressed audio data. The audio data is sent between the call participants by using the RTP protocol. Initiating, terminating and signalling of calls are supported by the SIP protocol.

This has not been decided yet. We consider H.323 an obsolete technology; besides, implementing it would increase the size of TiVi Phone software by about 150 KB. We have successfully tested the protocol but its implementation will depend on the actual demand by TiVi Phone users. If you'd like to have H.323 functionality, please let us know.

This aspect has not been fully tested yet. Should you observe technical problems while using TiVi Phone, please contact our technicians at info@tivi.com.

It depends on which TiVi Phone's version you use; usually it is about 340 KB (kilobytes).

It takes 2.79 kilobytes per second (22.32 kilobits per second) both in the upstream and downstream channels.

The computer's processor usage will somewhat vary in time but will usually remain between 0.5 and 5 percent. If the computer has at least a 1 GHz (gigahertz) CPU then the CPU usage will be about 2 percent.

No, because you can survive with a bare minimum of 64 MB (megabytes). Running under Windows(TM), TiVi Phone takes about 5.5 MB of RAM.