The further development of Web multimedia will depend on many factors. New compression techniques and new transportation protocol enhancements will improve streaming multimedia to a certain degree.

The biggest steps will be made when notion "standard" dial-up connections start to apply for higher bandwidths then those of 14.4 kbps and 28.8 kbps. More and more modems nowadays can connect at speeds of 33.6 kbps, and with Rockwell chipsets and X2 technology, even up to 56 kbps.

When majority of Web audience start to connect at those speeds, the Web multimedia will experience signifficant improvements.

According to one study, in a possible (digital) future every household should have at least 3 Mbps connection to the (future) Internet. This would enable average (US) family to stream two TV/video_rental_store_movie MPEG 2 channals, surf the Web (WebTV), and use few lines of digital phone at the same time.

But as the low-bandwidth multimedia war is getting tougher, new and better algorithms are being found. In some of the overviewed technologies highest bandwidth codecs produce viewable multimedia material at bandwidths of quater or less then used according to MPEG standard.

However, undeniable high quality of MPEG streams, as well as MPEG industry supported by the ISO, assure MPEG a long and happy life for many years to come.

Importance of Web multimedia is that it not only serves itself. All those critical situation experiences, transportation standards and compression codecs can be implemented in some future standards for some new hybrid Internet video, and its real-time delivery.