Abstract: A system for sending and receiving full motion, live, full duplex video of broadcast quality over existing telephone lines comprises apparatus for converting audio/video data recorded at a first location into a stream of packets, apparatus for reconverting the stream of packets into audio/video data to be presented at a second location, and apparatus for bypassing telephone company voice switches at central offices, thereby allowing the packets to travel directly from the local telephone lines to the long distance telephone network. The packets are created at the first location and are received at the second location and, in addition to encoded audio/video data, each packet contains a start flag, an end flag, and at least data specifying the encoding algorithm by which the encoded audio/video data was encoded.