HCCB

Overview

High Capacity Color Barcode (HCCB) is a proprietary 2D barcode technology developed by Microsoft that encodes data in clusters of coloured triangles rather than the square black-and-white modules used by QR Code and Data Matrix [2]. Data density is raised by drawing the triangular symbols from a palette of 4 or 8 colours, with a black-and-white (2-colour) fallback when colour reproduction is unavailable [2]. Microsoft positioned HCCB not as a replacement for retail UPC barcodes but as a "partner" or niche symbology for cases where a large amount of data must fit in a small printed area [1][2]. HCCB is best known as the underlying symbology of the consumer-facing microsoft-tag mobile tagging service.

History

HCCB was created by Gavin Jancke, an engineering director at Microsoft Research [1][2]. The technology was publicly detailed on 18 December 2007 by Microsoft Research [3]. Jancke characterised it as "more of a 'partner' barcode... Ours is more of a niche barcode," designed for scenarios where "you want to put a lot of information in a small space," rather than to displace conventional one-dimensional barcodes [1]. The research effort subsequently became the basis for the microsoft-tag mobile application launched in 2009 [2].

Technical specification

• Symbol shape and layout. HCCB uses coloured triangles arranged in a grid, rather than square pixels; capacity is increased by combining a different symbol shape with multiple colours per symbol [2][3].
• Colour palette. The format supports 8-colour, 4-colour, or 2-colour (black-and-white) configurations, with the 8-colour palette giving the highest density [2].
• Data density. Microsoft reported laboratory tests with standard off-the-shelf printers and scanners (a 600 dpi scanner) yielding roughly 2,000 binary bytes, or 3,500 alphabetical characters, per square inch in the 8-colour configuration — which Microsoft Research described as equating to "two pages of a novel" [3].
• Multiple payloads. A single symbol can store multiple individual data items, each compressed independently [3].
• Cryptographic signing. HCCB integrates digital-signing features using Elliptic Curve Cryptography and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) techniques, claimed to provide RSA-1024-strength security in only 20 bytes of payload overhead [3].
• Decoding performance. Microsoft Research reported real-time decoding from a video stream — for example about 30 ms on a 200 MHz ARM processor — with the smallest symbol readable on unmodified phone cameras at a print size of roughly 3/4 inch square [3].

Use cases

HCCB was designed for identifying commercial audiovisual works such as motion pictures and video games, letting a user retrieve ratings, promotions and pricing by scanning the code with a webcam or phone camera [3]. It was licensed by the ISAN International Agency for use in the International Standard Audiovisual Number (ISAN) standard [1][2]. Its largest real-world deployment was as the symbology behind the consumer microsoft-tag service for magazine and advertising scanning [2].

Implementations

There are no public, openly available HCCB encoder/decoder implementations. HCCB was a proprietary Microsoft technology; consumer access was mediated through the microsoft-tag reader app and Microsoft's servers rather than an open library or specification [2].

Comparison

Against QR Code, HCCB's selling point was higher data density: by adding colour as a third dimension to the 2D matrix, more information fits into the same printed area than a two-colour code allows [2]. However, HCCB depended on a proprietary reader and, in its microsoft-tag form, on a cloud lookup that resolved the scanned code to publisher content via Microsoft's servers — features that the open, royalty-free QR Code did not require [2]. QR Code's open ISO standardisation and the lack of any licensing or server dependency are widely cited reasons it prevailed over Microsoft's proprietary approach [4].

In the colour-2D niche, the open successor is JAB Code (Just Another Bar Code), a polychrome 2D matrix developed by Fraunhofer SIT that, unlike HCCB, is unlicensed, open source (LGPL v2.1), has a freely available specification, and was standardised as ISO/IEC 23634 [5]. JAB Code likewise exploits colour to raise capacity — a four-colour code roughly doubles, and an eight-colour code roughly triples, the data of a two-colour code of the same size [5] — but does so as an open standard rather than a proprietary, cloud-dependent system. See jab-code.

Fun facts

• Microsoft Research likened the highest-density 8-colour HCCB to fitting "two pages of a novel" into one square inch [3].
• The same symbology underpins both a film/game licensing identifier (via ISAN) and a consumer magazine-ad scanning service, microsoft-tag [2][3].

Status

HCCB is effectively discontinued. Its main public vehicle, microsoft-tag, was announced for shutdown on 19 August 2013 and terminated on 19 August 2015, with operations transitioned to Scanbuy's ScanLife QR platform [2]. No active Microsoft HCCB product or open implementation remains.

Sources

1. High Capacity Color Barcode — Wikipedia, accessed 2026
2. High Capacity Color Barcode — Liquisearch, accessed 2026
3. High Capacity Color Barcodes (HCCB) — Microsoft Research, 2007
4. Microsoft Gives Up On Its Tag Barcode Service, Schedules It For Shutdown In 2015 — TechCrunch, 2013
5. JAB Code — Wikipedia, accessed 2026

Deployments

No country reports mention this standard by name.

Regions / aggregations not mapped to a single country

• Universal