We're aware that some users are experiencing technical issues which the team are working to resolve. See the Community Noticeboard for more info. Thank you for your patience.
📨 Have you signed up to the Forum's new Email Digest yet? Get a selection of trending threads sent straight to your inbox daily, weekly or monthly!

Webcam PC and VPN

Options
tazwhoever
tazwhoever Posts: 1,326 Forumite
Part of the Furniture 500 Posts Name Dropper
edited 18 October 2020 at 4:45PM in Techie Stuff
I wish to buy webcam with microphone for PC and looking at videos on YouTube it seems 1080p picture is not very crisp. Is this best I get buy? I have a HD monitor.

Plus looking at free VPNs it seems these steal your data. What's the cheapest buying one and doesn't steal your data? 

Doing zoom meeting, etc. 

Thanks

Comments

  • wongataa
    wongataa Posts: 2,705 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Why do you think you need a VPN?
  • Chino
    Chino Posts: 2,031 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    edited 18 October 2020 at 4:51PM
    and looking at videos on YouTube it seems 1080p picture is not very crisp.
    This suggests that there's a problem with your monitor / display settings.
  • Neil_Jones
    Neil_Jones Posts: 9,550 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    edited 18 October 2020 at 7:13PM
    Or, on rare occasions, a video has been forced HD quality on something actually in potatovision (it does happen), or something's gone wrong and the YouTube system has tried to be clever.  After all there are no end of videos in the wrong aspect ratio for whatever reason, probably safe to assume some are potato vision trying to be HD.

    Note that YouTube will throttle your picture quality if your internet speed isn't fast enough to keep up, so if it turns out you can't stream a full 1080p it'll drop back to 720p, then 480 and so on, and try to increase the quality gradually.

    Re: the VPN - why do you think you need one for a Zoom meeting?
  • forgotmyname
    forgotmyname Posts: 32,922 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper
    1080p not crisp? What compression ratio and at what distance on what monitor?
    A video can be 4k and yet be a smaller file size than a 1080p version of the same video.

    If you have a quality 4k monitor then a poor quality 1080p camera image may look poor, try a
    decent 1080p camera image for comparison.  I spent a good few hours getting the best settings
    for a dashcam, webcam may have a lot more settings..

    Youtube is not a good test due to their high compression, youtubers can tinker to get more bandwidth
    for a given resolution.

    A VPN will not stop the program your running from gathering your data, choose a different program.


    Censorship Reigns Supreme in Troll City...

  • You can get webcams upto 4k if you are willing to pay for it, The quality you see is most usually driven by the software you are using and not the hardware.
    For VPNs Nord is pretty good.
  • PRAISETHESUN
    PRAISETHESUN Posts: 4,870 Forumite
    Sixth Anniversary 1,000 Posts Photogenic Name Dropper
    Monitor - 4K monitors are widely available if you're willing to fork out for one. A HD monitor will happily play 1080p, so the issue might be with your PC or your internet connection if Youtube defaults to a lower resolution. Keep in mind that even if you have a 4K monitor, if the media you are watching only outputs in 1080p, then you'll still only be watching in 1080p...

    Webcam - again, 4K webcams are available if you're willing to fork out. If you're only doing Zoom calls, then that's probably overkill, unless it's for work or something - in which case ask your employer what they can offer you. Your internet speed will also determine what resolution you can reliably stream.

    VPN - I use NordVPN and I have no issues. I've also used PIA in the past. You can get some decent deals sometimes on TopCashBack/Quidco/etc. Highly recommend avoiding the free services and picking a "no logs" provider if you're worried about privacy - although it won't stop dodgy programs/websites from stealing your data if you say sign into facebook for example. If you're having issues with internet speeds, then a VPN will probably make this worse, so just keep that in mind...

Meet your Ambassadors

🚀 Getting Started

Hi new member!

Our Getting Started Guide will help you get the most out of the Forum

Categories

  • All Categories
  • 350.9K Banking & Borrowing
  • 253.1K Reduce Debt & Boost Income
  • 453.6K Spending & Discounts
  • 244K Work, Benefits & Business
  • 598.8K Mortgages, Homes & Bills
  • 176.9K Life & Family
  • 257.2K Travel & Transport
  • 1.5M Hobbies & Leisure
  • 16.1K Discuss & Feedback
  • 37.6K Read-Only Boards

Is this how you want to be seen?

We see you are using a default avatar. It takes only a few seconds to pick a picture.