I am in your exact same situations (me living in the US, parents in Europe). I wanted to create a window to each other living rooms when I noticed one of the th

I am in your exact same situations (me living in the US, parents in Europe). I wanted to create a window to each other living rooms when I noticed one of the things I missed most is was seeing them on their daily routine. I have got my best results on vlc both sides (stream from one machine to the other), videoconference is not 100% realtime (there is a slight delay of about 1 second) but the image quality beats skype on linux. I use different processes for sending and display video. I use a couple of cheap low power computers and microsoft 720p usb webcams. It is not perfect, the image quality could be improved, but it is filling an emational void.