SVCD is a format thati isn't yet a internationally recognised format. It also is mainly used in the Asian countries such as China, Indonesia etc. They are region and parental free and they can be played on your PC using a DVD player software i.e. PowerDVD, WinDVD or Windows Media Player with the mp2codec.
It involves the use of MPEG 2 compression which is the same as DVD. It also uses MP2 compressin for the Audio with the bitrate between 64 and 384.
It uses a VBR for video at 2496 k/bits second which means that it analysises the video and in low motion scenes decresses the bitrate and increases in high motion scenes.
The Audio for a standard complient SVCD is 224k/bit per second.
The quality is the equivalent of close to DVD and also doesn't loose quality the more its played.
Most good quality DVD standalone players suppot this format.

Standard Compleint SVCD Consists of

480 x 576 (PAL)
480 x 480(NTSC)
MPEG 2 Video Compression at 2496 k/bits using either VBR or CBR
MP2 Audio compression at 224 k/bits Stereo or Joint-Stereo