D-Link i2eye DVC-1100 Wireless VideoPhone

The i2eye feels to us like a hybrid between a videophone and a videoconferencing system. It sits on top of your television, which it uses as its display. We can imagine that most would use the i2eye in a living room or family room where the whole family could gather round. Whereas the other videophones work best with a single person, the i2eye comfortably brings a small group of people into view.

Even a modest-sized TV dwarfs the displays found on standalone videophones. The larger size exaggerates any video compression and resolution faults but also shows people closer to life-size. In the testing, video quality was best at 256 Kbps, which could pose a problem for lower-bandwidth DSL but should not be an issue for many cable modem or DSL services. Quality at 128 Kbps was acceptable.

You configure the unit with the included remote control via on-screen menus from the comfort of your couch. The DVC-1100 model we tested connects to your network using either an Ethernet or wireless connection (it works with any Wi-Fi complaint 802.11b/g access point or router). An external microphone port and phone port can be used to improve audio quality.

You’ll need to open up some inbound ports on your firewall for the product to work. Whereas the videophones do some fancy negotiation to avoid changing firewall settings, D-Link just has you open up a range of TCP and UDP ports. It’s a bit more work but needs to be done only once.