To be totally honest here guys and girls... I would certainly be willing to put up the investment to get this coded - on the basis that I would regain my investment by selling the plugin at a low price - at say $10/15 which would be low enough to suit most peoples budgets. I supopse the risk here is that we then see vB implementing this functionality in the product by default. I don't mind funding development for the masses, but there's no way I am funding vB for their own product development...

hehe.
If there are any coders here who are interested in this, please do drop me a PM.