Recently we made our annual family trek to the Dayton airshow in Ohio for one of my favorite airshows.  Seeing everything on the ground and then watching them take off right in front of you before each demonstration is so very different than planes just appearing above you.

This year I had my new iPhone 3GS with me in addition to my Flip Mino HD video recorder.  Early in the show I was swapping back and forth to make sure to capture clips on both and then I decided to try a bit of a geek grip which let me record from both at the same time.

So here is a problem we’ve run up against several times: displaying live, streaming video in real-time. Doesn’t sound that hard, but you’d be amazed. We are generally dealing with RTSP streams, which both QuickTime and RealPlayer handle just fine - for pre-recorded content. But I’ll tell you what, no matter how many preferences you enable with names like “Instant-On”, “PlayNow”, and “TrueLive”, these players will continue to suck for real-time video.

I just had the opportunity to put video conferencing to a real trial by fire in an unexpected setting - a hospital waiting room. The other challenge was making the link using only a cellular broadband card — no ethernet, no wifi.