Anyone else having trouble with video Skype?

[DonJuane]

Your wi-fi connection can slow you down as well which will cause video and audio to become pixelated and choppy.

If a bad or slow wi-fi signal is the issue, maybe there are too many concrete walls between your laptop and the router. To resolve this you can simply move the computer to the room with the router when you make a call or if impractical to always to this (e.g. you are renting a room in someone elses house) you can work to have the home rewired to provide a strong signal everywhere you need it. If you must have a strong signal throughout a house in Mexico which is typically composed of thick concrete or adobe walls rather than air-spaced sheet-rock like in the US, it normally demands installing several additional routers at key points throughout the house or at least routers configured as access points, a process most hotels are required to do as well. Don't make the mistake of buying a more expensive router, as many people do this and purchase one that looks like a space-ship costing upwards of $300 or more. Limiting factor with all routers is the FCC limits all routers to a half a watt (500mW) maximum so no space ship look or number of antennas can help or expensive price because they all attempt to put out the maximum power the FCC will permit. Now a directional antenna can help a bit and even with those unless the router is in the corner of the house, a directional cannot follow your movements.

Anyway, you can check your data throughput with something like www.speedtest.net and your should see a speed of 0.5M upload or faster and 3M download or faster to use a video streamer like Skype. If the speed shown is lower than you are paying for, first move the assumed wi-fi enabled computer to the room with the router and test it and if you still see the slow speed, contact your service provider. If the slow speed is only seen where you commonly use the computer, find a technical person to run you a piggy back router or AP closer to the place you wish to use the computer.