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Image MIME Reference
DECE-Graphic

Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) Graphic

image/vnd.dece.graphic
VS

DVB Subtitle

image/vnd.dvb.subtitle
DVB-SUB

A complete technical comparison of Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) Graphic and DVB Subtitle — covering compression, feature support, browser compatibility, magic bytes, and when to choose each format.

Equal browser support

Feature Support

Feature DECE-Graphic DVB-SUB
Transparency (Alpha) Yes Yes
Animation Support ✕ No ✕ No
Progressive Loading ✕ No ✕ No
HDR Support ✕ No ✕ No
EXIF Metadata ✕ No ✕ No
ICC Color Profile ✕ No ✕ No
Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) Graphic
image/vnd.dece.graphic
Extension
.jpg.png.uvi
Container Standard JPEG/PNG within DECE CFF structures
Compression Lossy (JPEG) / Lossless (PNG)
Algorithm
DCT (JPEG)DEFLATE (PNG)
Color Depth 8-bit (RGB), 24-bit (RGB)
Developed by Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE) LLC
Released 2011
Magic Bytes
FF D8 FF (If JPEG) / 89 50 4E 47 (If PNG)
Full DECE-Graphic reference →
DVB Subtitle
image/vnd.dvb.subtitle
Extension
.sub.sup.ts
Container MPEG-2 Transport Stream (MPEG-TS) PES Packets
Compression Lossless (Run-Length Encoding)
Algorithm
RLE (Run-Length Encoding)
Color Depth 2-bit (Indexed), 4-bit (Indexed), 8-bit (Indexed CLUT)
Developed by DVB Project (ETSI)
Released 1997
Magic Bytes
20
Full DVB-SUB reference →

Browser Support Comparison

Browser DECE-Graphic DVB-SUB
Chrome Chrome
✕ ✕
Firefox Firefox
✕ ✕
Safari Safari
✕ ✕
Edge Edge
✕ ✕
IE IE (Legacy)
✕ ✕
DECE-Graphic

DECE-Graphic Strengths

  • Allowed the UltraViolet DRM ecosystem to easily distinguish structural UI/cover graphic assets from actual encrypted video tracks in a Common File Format container
Limitations
  • Completely obsolete since the 2019 shutdown of UltraViolet
  • Unnecessary abstraction, as the underlying files were just standard JPEGs or PNGs
  • Causes modern strict MIME-type validators to fail if they rely on the Content-Type header
DVB-SUB

DVB-SUB Strengths

  • Guarantees 100% accurate visual representation (fonts, colors, layouts) exactly as intended by the broadcaster
  • Effortlessly supports complex character sets (e.g., Arabic, Asian languages) without relying on the client device possessing the necessary fonts
  • Supports region-specific dynamic positioning to avoid obscuring important on-screen graphics or burned-in lower thirds
Limitations
  • Requires significantly more bandwidth than text-based subtitles
  • Inaccessible to screen readers and cannot be indexed by search engines
  • Requires OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to translate back into standard text-based web formats
  • Zero native support in HTML5 video elements

When to choose which format

DECE-Graphic
Use DECE-Graphic when…
  • UltraViolet Movie Cover Art
  • Common File Format (CFF) Asset Manifests
  • Legacy DRM Ecosystems
DVB-SUB
Use DVB-SUB when…
  • Digital Television Broadcasts (DVB-T, DVB-S, DVB-C)
  • IPTV and OTT Streaming
  • Hardware Set-top Boxes

More comparisons

DECE-Graphic vs ACES → DVB-SUB vs ACES → DECE-Graphic vs APNG → DVB-SUB vs APNG → DECE-Graphic vs AVCI → DVB-SUB vs AVCI → DECE-Graphic vs AVCS → DVB-SUB vs AVCS → DECE-Graphic vs AVIF → DVB-SUB vs AVIF → All comparisons →
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