Today I had a religious experience: I participated in a videoconference using a high quality Polycom system. This made a huge difference in communication quality -- people that I had a terrible time understanding previously now sounded like Shakespeare. Seeing a high quality video image was enormously helpful.

I asked operations how much the Polycom cost and they said that it cost $20K new and $4K off eBay. So this solution doesn't work for people who work from home or who work in offices but are in groups of 3 or fewer people.

My budget for a videoconferencing system is a few hundred dollars per person. Skype is not nearly good enough. And I haven't seen a consumer webcam that is good enough either.

Does such a solution exist? I'm looking to collaborate both with people who are close by (in the same city but not in the same room) and far away (on different continents).