I remember when VCD (subset of MPEG1) was the standard for releasing movies online. I was even in a group that converted them from VCD to MPEG4 for those for whom 2CDs (1400MB downloads) was just too big.
... and god help you if you were a 'scene' group and released a movie in anything other than a multi-part RAR set of 15MB files containing 2 x 700MB files. nuked!
The funny part is that I remember downloading videos in various formats and then converting them to VCD because DVD writers were still pretty expensive and I was a broke college student but my cheapo DVD player played VCDs as well as DVDs so I could watch stuff on the TV without dragging my PC down to the living room.
There was also a point where said cheapo DVD player broke and I was converting to a specific VCD format that would play on my roommate's Dreamcast. I think I either needed to boot to one disc that loaded the player into memory and then pop in the special Dreamcast-compatible VCD to play but I could be wrong. It's been a while.
All this because DVD burners and blank discs were still just outside of my budget.
