Moving Picture Experts Group

The Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG) is a ISO committee that was established in 1988 to develop standards for digital video compression with audio. The MPEG acronym is used to denote their various algorithms.

Standards

 * MPEG-1 is optimized for CD-ROM. A subset of MPEG-1, Audio Layer 3, is the basis for MP3.
 * MPEG-2 is aimed at broadcast quality video for applications such as digital television set-top boxes and DVD. Work on MPEG-3 was merged into MPEG-2.
 * MPEG-4 is a standard for video conferencing and multimedia on the web.

History
Apple first added MPEG-1 support to some 68040-based Macintosh models through an Apple MPEG Media System card, released in July 1995. Software playback of MPEG-1 video became possible on PowerPC Macs with the release of the QuickTime MPEG Extension on January 24, 1997. Support for MPEG-4 video was added with QuickTime 6.0 in July 2002.