Yeah I read about the issues some folks have been having.
Some seem to have had success, seems somewhat hit & miss though.

I took the Gtalk update today, got the red font update failure on startup, and everything worked fine after that.

Just made a 45 to about 1 hour video call from a better 3G spot and this time both of us could see each other. It worked great, at least compared to skype or vtok on my iphone 4s. from the same spot those iphone apps were freezing up instantly. I didn't get any video freeze on the n9 until i started multitasking to take a screenshot, but that resolved in a minute or two.

the n9 multitasking worked really well here. when i minimized the video call, it was still live and i could see my contact still moving in the minimized screen, and the call audio was ongoing. that was pretty awesome, but I guess to be expected from maemo/harmattan. I scrolled over to the apps and opened screenshotme and was able to open that to take a screenshot of the call and all of this happened smoothly without interrupting the call (except the one-time brief freeze, but another time the same steps did not freeze, so it could have been a network fluke).

I'd say 45 mins to 1 hour used about 1 GB of data, according to my n9 data counter. the video quality is decent and smooth for both ends, not laggy. when I switched between front and back camera my contact said they didn't notice a huge difference. all of this call was with the less powerful front camera.

I'm quite happy with this feature. I'm very surprised i had a better experience with it than the iphone skype/vtok apps.

To have fun with videochat, it may be easiest to start by using your laptop to create an alternate user-ID in Gtalk and enable videochatting. Then put that ID in your phone's contact list. You should then see the videochatting option associated with this contact. Call yourself from the PC and play with the options. Tapping your picture on the phone turns the video feed from the front facing camera on or off. Tapping on the phone's larger video feed changes the appearance of the UI. There is also a button to toggle whether you want to select the main or the FFC to send to the other party.

Some tests ran fine, especially when the n9 called the computer, but I had trouble linking the n9 with a Samsung smartphone, even though both showed the video option icon as available. It took a couple of runs for things to stabilize, so keep at it. I am confident that these few kinks will be quickly resolved.

Wow that's all very impressive!
I'm very surprised that IYE, it's better than Skype on the iP4S.
None of the install issues others seem to be having either.
The install routine does sound somewhat clumsy/unintuitive though.

No luck with Peregrine devs yet, they're still ignoring me in IRC.
I'll continue to harass them until I get answers though...

I have had the GTalk Video update 1.0.5-2 today, the device reboots without any prompt(I was expecting this due to being the same during initial installation on 1st of March) and then I got the red font "Recovering from failed update, please do not interrupt" warning, that was 3 times going from 0% to 100% and then everything was OK.
Haven't tried video call yet though

So can you post the screenshot you took to impress us?

Yeah, pics/vids or it didn't happen! jk

So the FFC being where it is isn't hugely crippling after all?
That's what many folks were trying to argue...

LOL, I thought someone might ask that. She'd probably kill me if she knew I posted it, but maybe I'll post it later after I edit it to protect the innocent.

As far as it being "better" than iphone skype, i'm still gonna chalk the difference up to network stuff. I've had other occasions where iphone skype was very smooth and clear (and the quality of the iphone 4s camera is better than the N9) so I'm not so sure it's better than that when it works. I'll qualify it a little more to say that for the location I was in, the N9 handled it better than the two iphone vid call apps. oh and btw, there was another variable here, the iphone was running over AT&T 3G, while the N9 was on T-mobile 3G, both unlimited data plans so that could have had something to do with it too.

No I don't find the FFC crippling. I don't know how to quantify the quality of it, but it was what I expected for the N9 let's say. The gtalk app also didn't break my regular N9 camera like others have claimed, that still works fine, so perhaps there are other things at play in those reports.

I can't recall any context, all I can remember are bullet-points with "support für video calls" being one of them. Anyway, doesn't matter any more now we know it's still not there...

I'm only using Video Chat based on XMPP services; GTalk is one of them, but there's not much of a difference between using GTalk or, say, jabber.ccc.de. Same client, same protocol,... I wouldn't use non-free services such as Skype. Never.