Term of the Week - VCD

VCD stands for Video CD. Developed in the early 90's by JVC, Matsushita, Phlips, and Sony, VCDs, although having limited success in the U.S., became popular, mostly in Asia, for the playback of video content.

Employing a compression system known as MPEG1, 74 minutes of audio and video can be stored on a standard CD at a 352x240 pixel resolution in NTSC or 352x288 PAL, which is somewhat comparable to standard VHS. Special VCD players and many DVD players do have the ability to play back VCDs, and almost all PCs have the ability for the user to record their own VCDs. Keep in mind, however, that even though that VCD content is stored on a CD, standard CD players cannot play them back as they have no way to read or output video content.

A variation of VCD is known as SVCD, which stands for Super Video CD. The difference between an SVCD and a VCD is that SVCDs have a higher resolution, so only 35 minutes can be stored on a standard CD that can normally hold 74 minutes of CD or VCD content. As with VCDs, many DVD players can also play back SVCDs.