MPEG-3 is the designation for a group of audio and video coding standards agreed upon by the Moving Picture Experts Group

Moving Picture Experts Group

The Moving Picture Experts Group is a working group of experts that was formed by ISO and IEC to set standards for audio and video compression and transmission. It was established in 1988 by the initiative of Hiroshi Yasuda and Leonardo Chiariglione, who has been from the beginning the Chairman...

 (MPEG) designed to handle HDTV

High-definition television

High-definition television is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems . HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD...

 signals at 1080p

1080p

1080p is the shorthand identification for a set of HDTV high-definition video modes that are characterized by 1080 horizontal lines of resolution and progressive scan, meaning the image is not interlaced as is the case with the 1080i display standard....

 in the range of 20 to 40 megabits per second. MPEG-3 was launched as an effort to address the need of an HDTV standard while work on MPEG-2

MPEG-2

MPEG-2 is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods which permit storage and transmission of movies using currently available storage media and transmission...

was underway, but it was soon discovered that MPEG-2, at high data rates, would accommodate HDTV. Thus, in 1992 HDTV was included as a separate profile in the MPEG-2 standard and MPEG-3 was rolled into MPEG-2.