Low latency is probably more important to me.
Recently I seem to have a 3 second delay on many VC calls at work (and just for me it seems), and I either end up interrupting people or feeling reluctant to talk at all since it becomes impossible to time gaps and conversations right.
Despite that I get a crystal clear HD picture for all participants, but I'd happily sacrifice video quality (in fact I'd accept audio only in some cases) to get a more real time experience (disabling video doesn't seem to have any effect).
If you're really willing to sacrifice video completely, at least for Zoom, and probably for lots of other videoconferencing solutions, you can call into meetings with your phone. In fact, I think Zoom allows you to join with the computer for video and the phone for audio, which might be the best of both worlds.
Slight issue in Toronto has been cellular system overloading and calls not being completed. But once on, no problem.
I can’t blame the providers though. How could they have predicted that people would use the service they’re paying for?
That can be controlled, since these compression algorithms usually work by making a prediction and sending the difference between the prediction and the actual value.
That works both for lossless compression - where the difference is sent in full - and lossy as well - where only the most important part of the difference is sent.
Downside could be some uncanny valley if the models are not very high quality.
But if I had to make a prediction, I'd expect we'll get much more value from higher bandwidth, ultra high definition streaming and features like 3d cameras / virtual reality. I think we have a tendency to really underestimate how important high definition is for human communication.