Late to the party but that means the problem is well hashed out right?

December 11, 2020 8:34 PM

Semi lock down looks to extend well past even Ukrainian Xmas this year. What will be the easiest internet meeting thing I can get my extended family to use in order to have a virtual Xmas dinner?

Everyone will be on or have access to laptops running some flavour of Windows. Everyone has some sort of smart phone though there there is a mix of Android and iOS. There will be 8-10 households joining the meeting.

I'd like something where I can just send a link to people and any app they need will mostly automatically install. My union has been using Zoom and it would be perfect except for the 40 minute time limit on the free tier. I'm willing to pay the C$20 for a one month license if that is the way to go but a free solution would be preferred. Discord is way too complicated for the user base. Is there a free option I'm overlooking?

posted by Mitheral to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Google meet is only $6 US per month and allows up to 100 participants. It is designed to be seamless if you are using google calendar or if everyone is within your business domain but if you look around, you can figure out how to send the link to "external" people. Once they get the link, they can just use their browser to access it.
posted by metahawk at 9:04 PM on December 11, 2020

Google Meet is still free to use and easy to get started with. You can just go to meet.google.com with any Google account to setup a meeting, and it will give you a link you can send to others.

Zoom lifted the 40 minute time limit on the free version for Thanksgiving. I have no idea if they'll do the same thing for Christmas, but it wouldn't surprise me. If you're comfortable with Zoom, I'd look out for an announcement about that.
posted by zachlipton at 9:22 PM on December 11, 2020 [1 favorite]

Definitely Google Meet! I’ve been using the free version for meetings for years and I actually prefer it to Zoom in almost all situations. The only thing it lacks is the waiting room, which I actually think is a plus if you’re dealing with folks who are less video chat savvy—I’ve lost a lot of folks on zoom who think it’s not working when they are really just in the waiting room. Folks without gmail can still join as a guest and they don’t need to install anything if they do it on the computer. Phone/tablet are suboptimal as you won’t be able to see all 10 parties at once; this is the biggest question I get. “Why can’t I see myself? Where is everyone else, I only see you?”
posted by assenav at 9:28 PM on December 11, 2020

Jitsi is another alternative, and if you're techy you can run it on your own server.

I like Jitsi because it just runs in the browser.
posted by freethefeet at 9:30 PM on December 11, 2020 [2 favorites]

Google Meet works well, but I'll say the iOS app is not my favorite. There's a lot of swooping between who is speaking, and no way to view all speakers in the same sized boxes at once on an iPad like you can with zoom (so, you have one big box for the speaker and thumbnails for everyone else). I used it for friendly get-togethers twice and then switched to zoom. That's just a personal preference thing though.
posted by past unusual at 9:34 PM on December 11, 2020

I haven’t tried it in a while but Google Duo is free and allows up to 32 devices. It works on laptops, iOS, and Android. Google Duo.

Jitsi Meet is free and open source. It worked well when I used it on a laptop computer but their iOS app was giving me a few problems. I think it’s possible to use a mobile browser for Jitsi Meet instead of the App but I’m not positive.

I used Google Meet for work previously and I found it easy to use with people of all tech abilities but it requires everyone to have a Google account unless you have a paid Google Workspace account (formerly known as G Suite) that also requires a web domain like mundo.com .
posted by mundo at 9:36 PM on December 11, 2020

Thirding Jitsi Meet. It has an Android client that works fine, and an iOS client that I've never personally used.

On desktop computers, you can join with just a browser. Or, if you prefer a standalone client, you can use Jitsi Meet Electron (for any of Windows, macOS or Linux).

I've used this for a virtual (USian) Thanksgiving with my non-technical parents, as well as weekly online game sessions with friends and co-workers. All free, no time limits, just push the button and it goes. AV sync and echo cancellation are automatic and seem to work well. It supports optional passwords and lobbies. You can choose you own short human-friendly persistent meeting link along the lines of https://meet.jit.si/MyExampleMeeting.

There are options for running your own infrastructure and/or using end-to-end encryption, if you need that. Mixes well with OBS and VB-Cable for individual participants who want to raise the bar on their production quality.

The only down side I can think of is that there's no option for sending raw audio, so it's not as good as some other options if you're trying to perform music.
posted by sourcequench at 11:02 PM on December 11, 2020

Zoom lifted the 40 minute limit for US Thanksgiving and I imagine they will do so again for Christmas. But even if they don't, it doesn't matter -- every participant can re-join immediately by clicking the same link they clicked to join in the first place.
posted by DarlingBri at 6:44 AM on December 12, 2020

Skype works fine and is fairly universal. For whatever you use, try to assign someone to manage the meeting, Ex., mics, somebody will invariably have music playing, and their mic might take over, stuff like that. Also, that person can call Cousin Pat to troubleshoot connectivity. I think it helps to have an agenda, whether it's announced or not, maybe each family takes a turn going around the table with updates. Have toasts. Kids can show off toys. Structured meetings are way, way better for me.

Trying to sing over video meetings is a miserable train wreck. Not possible. 1 site can play music, maybe sing, other sites *must* be muted.
posted by theora55 at 1:27 PM on December 12, 2020