However, it's been the best part of two decades since the first home videophone went on sale, and videophones have since proved as popular as a lunch date with Hannibal Lecter.
British Telecom and the US Telco AT&T first tried flogging the concept in 1992, with the launch of the Relate 2000 and VideoPhone 2500 respectively.
The handsets promised video refresh rates of 8fps, although most reports suggest that you were lucky to see the picture change more often than your hairstyle.
A decade on, video calls were proposed as one of the cornerstones of flashy new 3G networks, but coverage was initially appalling and the service struggled to find an audience.
Despite these failures, the technology is still staggering on to this very day. How long do you think it's going to take companies to work out that nobody wants to look at the person they're calling?