The
Moving Picture Experts Group or MPEG is a working group
of ISO/IEC charged with the development of video and audio encoding
standards. Its first meeting was in 1988 in Hanover. As of late
2005, MPEG has grown to include approximately 350 members from various
industries and universities. MPEG's official designation is ISO/IEC
JTC1/SC29 WG11.
MPEG
(pronounced EM-peg) has standardized the following compression formats
and ancillary standards:
MPEG-1:
Initial video and audio compression standard. Later used as the
standard for Video CD, and includes the popular Layer 3 (MP3)
audio compression format.
MPEG-2:
Transport, video and audio standards for broadcast-quality television.
Used for over-the-air digital television ATSC, DVB and ISDB, digital
satellite TV services like DirecTV, digital cable television signals,
and (with slight modifications) for DVD video discs.
MPEG-3: Originally
designed for HDTV, but abandoned when it was discovered that MPEG-2
was sufficient for HDTV.
MPEG-4:
Expands MPEG-1 to support video/audio "objects", 3D content, low
bitrate encoding and support for Digital Rights Management. Several
new (newer than MPEG-2 Video) higher efficiency video standards
are included (an alternative to MPEG-2 Video), notably, Advanced
Simple Profile and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC.
MPEG-7: A formal
system for describing multimedia content.
MPEG-21: MPEG describes
this future standard as a multimedia framework.
