iSight Specs

I mentioned to Krud and Mark last night while iChatting that the iSight built into the new iMac and MacBook Pro's have twice the resolution of the original, stand-alone $149 iSight camera. But I started to question that after Krud sent me a screen capture from his new MacBook Pro that was 640x480 pixels in resolution. Was the original iSight resolution set at 320x240 or is the new integrated iSight supposed to be a whopping 1280x960 now? If that were true, I'm sure the ambitious Apple marketing machine would be all over that spec in its marketing ads.

The fact is that the resolution has always been 640x480 VGA.

So where did I get that number? I'm not exactly sure, comments on Mac forums refer to the integrated iSight as having better specs, but while researching, I found this interesting tidbit on the iMac/iSight product page:

Multi-way Chat
With support(1) for video chats between up to four people and a stunning, three-dimensional view, with four times the resolution of previous iSight, iChat AV practically puts your friends and family in the room with you.

Four times the resolution? I think Apple might be referring to the size of the iChat AV 3 window, but I would think that the new H.264 video codec would be responsible for that, not the hardware in iSight. But the iChat page states that H.264 is responsible for a sharper picture and improved color accuracy, not increased resolution.

So if anyone knows what Apple actually means with 4x the res, please drop me a note!