Not entirely sure if this was meant as satire, but in case it wasn't: If I wanted to be judged on my physical looks or the quality in which those are presented to others over the wire, I would have been working in the film industry.
Landlines had exceptional fidelity and let one pick up the nuance of a person's emotional state. Today's cellular connections not so much. Thankfully things like Apple Facetime (audio only) recapture some of that.
Likewise with a high quality webcam I think it's important to treat your coworkers with respect by giving them the grace of seeing your body language in high resolution if you're going to opt out of physical meetings. Remote work is fine, just don't phone it in with the equivalent of 2000's era potato camera.
I agree in that improved audiovisual quality would be beneficial, but, at least for regular video calls, I don't believe it's reasonable to expect for people to go out of their way to do better than the quality their (not too old) laptop provides - not past ensuring they're in a reasonably quiet environment with halfway decent lighting anyway.
Besides, recent generations of laptops are finally shifting to better quality webcams and microphones. We'll get to where we'd both like it to be, eventually :)