Digital images, compression, decompression and your system

The dream system can playback whatever you ask of it and is inexpensive. The dream system plays back high resolution at full color and full speed. The simple answer to the problem of image transport, playback, recording and storage is digital compression/decompression, but that´s where the simplicity ends. Digital images are the target of playback, but come at a price. The limitations of digital images are the bandwidth to transport, compress, capacity to store, decompress and bandwidth to playback and record. Standard systems can do some of the compression/decompression with standard components. First, there are the graphics subsystem, storage, software, firmware and the main CPU. Each of these components has limitations based upon bandwidth. Second, there´s software decompression which provides the most flexible method for playback at a reasonable cost. The limitations of software decompression are also seen in bandwidth analysis. Software compression is harder than decompression and can require great amounts of patience. So what´s the solution to these limitations? The solution for some users is image compression while others need decompression. Deciding when you need a video codec is difficult. The right digital image processing method should become clear as one type of compression and decompression find their way on enough systems to form a critical mass