Skype announced 720P support & my predictions for the decade

If you didnt see it already, Skype is now support HD in their latest beta code, supporting 720P resolution:

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39967077,00.htm


This is not surprising.  With the advent of lots of cheap horsepower in x86 chipsets, why would one need a DSP based system...much less a single purpose codec.

So..here's my simple prediction for 2010...  this will be the decade of video conferencing switching off of single purpose DSP driven codec designs.  This seems like a turn of events...i.e.  at the start of the last decade Picturetel moved to Windows based systems...and then by 2004, PLCM was abandoning the iPower windows based systems in favor the VSX line.  But... now that x86 has lots of power, software has gotten a lot better, and most people expect lots of functionality..you just cant go with a single purpose system.

So...long with that... I also predict that a ton of cloud based services will come out for conferencing.  Why should customers buy and operate the infrastructure when they can have it sit in the cloud, saving them both bandwidth, capex, and opex.

Wow...really deep predictions I know ;-)   .. but they do have serious consequences for hardware mfgs like PLCM and TAA.