Super Video CD Technology. High-Quality Video CD (HQ-VCD), developed by the Video CD Consortium (consisting of Philips, Sony, Matsushita and JVC — creators of the original Video CD specification) was a relatively late entry. The Chinese Ministry of Information and the Video CD Consortium agreed to join forces, incorporating the features of HQ-VCD under a unified SVCD format. But by the time the SVCD specification was ready in July 1998, CVD had already been adopted by major manufacturers and had quickly established a significant installed base of about 600,000 players. This prompted the Chinese government to force a compromise between the competing standards
Video CD audio frequency range is limited to those sounds most clearly heard by the human ear. The VCD standard also features the option of DVD-quality still images/slide shows with audio, at resolutions of 704×480 (NTSC) or 704×576 (PAL/SECAM). Version 2.0 also adds the playback control (PBC), featuring a simple menu like DVD-Video. Shortly before the advent of White Book VCD, Philips started releasing movies in the Green Book CD-i format, calling the subformat CD-i Digital Video (CD-i DV). While these used a similar format (MPEG-1), due to minor differences between the standards these discs are not compatible with VCD players. Philips'