MPEG-2 (aka H.222/H.262 as defined by the
ITU) 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 bandwidth. While MPEG-2 is not as efficient as newer standards such as
H.264 and
H.265/HEVC, backwards compatibility with existing hardware and software means it is still widely used, for example in over-the-air digital television broadcasting and in the
DVD-Video standard.