This deep dive covers Deep Dive: Why Compression Matters within Compression for GCSE Computer Science. Revise Compression in 3.3 Data Representation for GCSE Computer Science with 16 exam-style questions and 16 flashcards. This topic appears regularly enough that it should still be part of a steady revision cycle. It is section 2 of 12 in this topic. Use this deep dive to connect the idea to the wider topic before moving on to questions and flashcards.
Deep Dive: Why Compression Matters
Remember Topic 15? An uncompressed 3-minute CD-quality song = 31.7 MB. A 4K movie uncompressed = 6,000 GB (6 TB)! Without compression:
- Your 128GB phone would store ~4,000 photos instead of 40,000
- Netflix would need 100× more servers
- Downloading a movie would take days instead of minutes
- Web pages would load in minutes instead of seconds
Compression is the invisible hero that makes modern digital life possible. Every photo, song, video, and web page you interact with is compressed.
Practice questions for Compression
Which statement correctly describes lossy compression?
Explain how run-length encoding (RLE) works to compress data.