DVDs use compression to hold Hollywood movies. A standard DVD holds 4.7 Gigabytes of data, which would be enough to hold only 2 minutes of uncompressed 270 Mbps video signal. With compression, the same DVD can easily hold 2 hours' worth of video and audio content.

Digital satellite systems rely on high-performance compression to deliver hundreds of channels of programming. Without compression, the number of channels delivered would drop by a factor of six or more, and the high quality offered by digital technology would disappear.

High definition television (HDTV) requires an immense amount of bandwidth in its uncompressed form, roughly 1500 Mbps. With compression, that signal can be reduced to less than 19 Mbps. This compression allows an HD signal to be broadcast in the same amount of radio spectrum as a traditional analog television broadcast.

Streaming video depends heavily on video compression, simply because the amount of bandwidth that is available to most users would choke on uncompressed video content. Even DSL and cable modem users would not be able to handle the bit rates generated by an uncompressed video image that occupied a window as small as a large...