Cecil told Ars the TASBot team's initial plans involved showing some sort of live webcam data through the SNES, but since the controller ports could only reliably pass about 3.8 KB/s to the system, that wasn't exactly workable.
That's still ~30Kbps, which is more than some early videophones used (working over an analogue POTS line)... and having seen how far the demoscene has gone with limited hardware, I don't think low-bitrate, low-resolution video would've been impossible; just maybe a bit too much for them to do. Either way, this is quite impressive already so I'm not complaining, but the limits are still a bit further yet.
That's still ~30Kbps, which is more than some early videophones used (working over an analogue POTS line)... and having seen how far the demoscene has gone with limited hardware, I don't think low-bitrate, low-resolution video would've been impossible; just maybe a bit too much for them to do. Either way, this is quite impressive already so I'm not complaining, but the limits are still a bit further yet.