I have written a new white paper that gives an overview of the H.264/AVC standard (here). It's intended to be a (relatively) non-technical introduction to the standard. The new paper describes what H.264 is, how an H.264 video codec works and why H.264 is an important industry standard. I'd be happy to receive any comments.

I will be posting a number of new H.264 tutorials over the next few months. I plan to update the existing tutorials (here) and add further topics. The first will be an "easy" introduction to the H.264/AVC standard. I'd welcome requests for new tutorial topics, so please add a comment if you'd like to suggest a topic for a tutorial paper.
- Iain