H.264

The dramatic improvements in compression and quality, which some tests peg as high as 4 times the objective quality of MPEG-4 Part 2, have ushered in a sea change in what you can do with digital video. It allows for broadcast-quality standard definition video at 1.5Mbps, which translates into something like 12 compressed channels in the bandwidth formerly occupied by one analog broadcast station. You could use H.264 compression to squeeze a high-definition movie onto a regular old DVD, or streaming VHS-quality video across a low-end ADSL connection at 600Kbps.