Short answers, pulled from the story.
Video CD, or VCD, was created in 1993 when four electronics giants including Sony, Philips, Matsushita, and JVC signed the White Book specification. This standard allowed engineers to store 74 minutes of content on a single 650 megabyte disc using MPEG-1 technology.
Video CD resolution measures 352 pixels wide by 240 lines high for NTSC regions and 352 pixels by 288 lines for PAL and SECAM regions. These dimensions measure half below common VHS standards while offering picture quality nearly double that of analog tape sources compared to LaserDisc which arrived in Atlanta on the 15th of December 1978.
Eight million VCD players sold in China alone during 1997 with more than half of all Chinese households owning at least one player by 2005. Major adoption occurred across Asian nations except Japan and South Korea while India, Indonesia, and most African countries embraced the format as low-cost alternatives.
North America rejected the format because established VHS systems remained less expensive than early VCD alternatives and offered comparable video quality at lower cost. Recording over existing tapes provided flexibility that discs could not match while DVD-Video quickly overshadowed VCD wherever consumers could afford it after 2000.
The net bitrate for VCD video sits at 1,150 kilobits per second as a constant value with audio compression using MPEG-1 Audio Layer II at 44,100 hertz sample frequency. Audio bitrate stays fixed at 224 kilobits per second while output remains dual channel stereo or Dolby Surround.