Fundamentals and Evolution of MPEG-2 Systems: Paving the MPEG Road

2Technology Developments Around 1990

Technology developments leading to establishing MPEG and the resulting success of MPEG at the market place.

The establishment of MPEG in 1988 and its success in the market place were not coincidental, but the result of a number of important developments. From a technology perspective, digital video compression technology became feasible for widespread market introduction during the 1980s.

During the 1980s, digital video compression technology was standardized for videophone and video-conferencing applications (see Note 2.1). An important objective of this standardization effort was to resolve the critical problem of interoperability between telecommunication equipment from different manufacturers. In about the same timeframe, a multimedia desktop video standard for personal computers was developed.¹ Both standards were designed for the target application, but not for industry wide usage.

Note 2.1 Standardization for Video-conferencing and Videophone Applications

In the end of the 1980s, the telecommunication industry was heavily investing in Narrow Band ISDN (Integrated Service Digital Network). Amongst the foreseen ISDN applications were video-conferencing and videophone; these provided the motivation for the standardization of a video codec for audiovisual services at p × 64 kbit/s, where p takes values from one to more than 20, corresponding to the number of used ISDN channels of 64 kbit/s each. This standardization took place in ...