The Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) was an international standards body, largely industry-based in the US, Europe and Japan, that addressed the digital processing and transfer of television programs.

Development.

The first application of an MPEG standard was for CD-ROM, which of necessity was at the low end of the quality scale. MPEG-1 did not take hold due to this limitation.

MPEG 2 became the dominant standard for TV encoding and transmission, thanks to its early adoption by direct broadcast systems like DIRECTV, Echostar and SKY (UK).

Future.

Because the more-recent MPEG-4 standard can cut data rates in half for the same quality, it may ultimately replace MPEG-2. There are other benefits to MPEG-2 in the area of multimedia and complex image types.

Capabilities.

The MPEG standard uses a fixed packet length of 288 Bytes and can accommodate different types of data: encoded and compressed video and audio, control information, and Internet Protocol data