While the West has chosen DVDs as the future of digital media, China has decided to forego the more costly DVD technology and instead develop an improved CD. The new design encodes video and audio with a higher quality bit stream when there is fast motion or loud sound, saving on data space when signal strengths are low (still picture shots and/or silence). This variable bit-rate method gives very high quality sound and images; since the media is still a CD-type design, the large number of existing CD factories in the Far East can produce the SVCDs in extensive numbers, resulting in a cheaper format.

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Precised by Ian Mapleson, 16/Aug/1998.