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A video compact disc (VCD) is a digital video
format used for storing video on standard compact discs. Video compact discs can be
played on dedicated video compact disc players, personal computers and other
players such as DVD players. After enjoying a brief period of popularity, they
have lost their popularity to other formats, although VCD still continues as
an option for low-cost video formats.
Techopedia Explains Video Compact Disc
Created in 1993 by Sony, Philips, Matsushita and JVC, the video compact disc standard was designed to store MPEG-1 video data with interactive features. In other words, a video compact disc makes use of a compression standard known as MPEG for storing video and audio. Similar to the resolution of VHS, a video compact disc is capable of holding approximately 75 minutes of video at a data transfer rate of 1.44 Mbps. One of the salient features of the video compact disc format is that it eliminates unnecessary information from MPEG-1 data.
Similar to the issues caused by rise of MP3s to the music industry, video compact discs caused concern because they made pirating easy. This was one of the reasons why the popularity of video compact discs declined, as it had no other security measures against unauthorized copying. Furthermore, DVDs can store double the digital video content compared to VCDs, and with higher quality recording.
