Like JPEG, this second entry in the De Jure Standards Series aims to provide essential background in the form of hows, whys, and wherefores, plus the normative standard itself. MPEG, however, is far more controversial than JPEG with much larger user markets in television,radio,telecommunications,and computer communications of all sorts. Debate among proponents of competing standards has been lively but complicated by the psuedo-C format in which MPEG 1 is written. Relatively few MPEG experts have emerged even as more and more companies announce its adoption. This book includes an overview of MPEG and an introduction to more of the data compression concepts specific to MPEG, which are included because of their significance to MPEG data compression.