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Ask HN: Why WebRTC has not yet delivered interoperatible video conferencing
In my work, I need to communicate across small and big client organizations across the globe. Every one of them has a habit to stick to some specific video conferencing app which we have to install locally. These apps work more or less mediocre, sometimes local variants we do not use in western world.
There are some website based WebRTC solutions, also featured in HN, which do video conferencing in browser using WebRTC. However if you exclude Google Hangouts, which is Chrome only, I have not seen anybody of using these yet.
What is still preventing WebRTC / no-installation-needed video conferencing take over?
- shams93 8y agoWith it only having just gotten iOS safari support it's just getting started. You can expect a much bigger proliferation of services over the next two years as flash is completely phased out.
- detaro 8y agoScreen sharing as far as I know only works in Chrome. Peer-to-peer WebRTC is a) bandwidth-intensive and b) has weird failure cases where some connections fail and others don't, especially if the group gets larger (not seen a WebRTC based solution that reliably worked for 8+ people, despite trying quite a few). For smaller groups I see them using WebRTC based solutions, but the experience a dedicated video conferencing system can provide is in my experience better, and especially if it's primarily internal to the organization or with regular partners special clients aren't that much of an issue. WebRTC based bridges into those systems is an interesting option, and I suspect something that will happen over time, but for now I've seen few server-based WebRTC solutions.