For a look into the near future: Fujitsu is releasing a chip on July 1st that appears to encode HD in real time for only $247.
A chip like this could forseeably make it's way into an Apple computer this year. Pair that with fiber optics and next January's CES conference could be full of people streaming high quality video in realtime over the net. Could be pretty boring to see but the implication otherwise are pretty neat. http://tinyurl.com/2833lt
