I just came across Andy's comments about the state of room based video conferencing. I have to say that I agree completely. I've been to a number of Cisco Telepresence demo's now and there's no question it's impressive. The price tag kills the interest for all but the richest companies though. $250k for the required two sides of the 3 TV Telepresence unit and that doesn't even include the UCM system it requires or the 15mbps of bandwidth it needs for start up. No doubt it's easy to use and the video is absolutely incredible, but it's just one of those technologies that hasn't filtered down yet.
One thing Andy mentions is the ultimate ability for the home user to access the same tech. Well, that's a ways off but you can see it coming. Cisco's acquisition of Scientific Atlanta is all about just this sort of thing. I'm kind of surprised Cisco hasn't kicked something out in that regard. Their assimilation usually takes a couple of months but they've had SA for how long now? 2 years maybe? Bandwidth is less of a concern than in the corporate world and more and more houses have HDTV's already installed. Maybe Cisco's too hung up on the "experience" which would certainly be affected by consumer class implementations.