He might be referring to the hundreds of pages (and very complicated implementations, usually of encoders) video formats have.

People think of technology as a straight line moving forward. But it's perhaps better to imagine like species in nature. It's just everything getting bigger. The smallest ant or bacteria evolves to better adapt to its niche, as the largest elephant or whale will develop adaptations (sometimes getting physically larger, depending on the environmental changes). The rule is that many scales have a role or niche. I think technology is similar.