Video compression technology has enabled more data to be stored in much less space. The 25 Mb/s motion-JPEG (M-JPEG) systems of several years ago have now migrated to MPEG-2 and DV. Bit rates are reduced to as low as 6-to-8 Mb/s (long GOP) with acceptable picture quality. Board sets for servers are gradually dropping the combination MJPEG/MPEG-2 codecs and producing only MPEG-2 or MPEG-2/DV sets.

Standardization on compressors and bit streams (e.g., MPEG transport streams) are enabling multiple video streams to be multiplexed into a single DS3-like format and transported over satellite to store-and-forward servers. High definition compressed video would not only be stored within the facility, but distributed direct to home either via satellite or 8VSB transmission.