The Crux Of The Problem
Latency, jitter and packet loss each represent varying degrees of issues to the applications of concern. Live and shorter-length video collaboration, like news reporting from the field or video conferencing, has no tolerance for latency (no more than a split second from action to eyeball) while it may compensate video quality to some degree. Moreover, jitter — the variability in packet delivery forcing the receiving decoder to spend more cycles collecting and re-ordering packets — can have an exponential effect on latency. On the other hand, a 24/7 broadcast service with continuous live or on-demand video feed would not tolerate even a minor packet loss (<0.001% or 1 packet every 2 minutes) as it can create a few seconds of disruption to the video every other minute.
Finally, the law of physics tells us that over large distances, due to the limitations with the speed of light (for every 186 miles video travels there's a millisecond of delay), latency increases by almost 70 milliseconds for video to travel half way around the globe. To compensate for these issues, video quality gets sacrificed in most solutions to reduce the effects of latency, jitter and packet loss.
