The image sharing website Imgur is updating the GIF (Graphics Interchange Format). GIF got its start in 1987 as a graphics format for the CompuServe online service, a once-popular destination for online activity in the days before the Internet went mainstream. The decades-old format lets people create silent, auto-playing, repeating animations, and it’s found on sites like Imgur, Yahoo’s Tumblr and Google+ auto-awesome animations. But animated GIFs have difficulties from their late ’80s creation, including a very limited 256-color palette and bloated file sizes.

Those problems are why Imgur introduced a new format it calls GIFV, short for GIF Video. It’s actually Web video that’s packaged to behave like an animated GIF. When a person uploads an animated GIF to Imgur, the company transcodes it into video compressed with the H.264 standard and tucked inside an MP4 file container. The result is significantly higher resolution with storage requirements that are 85% lower.

“The converted MP4s are significantly smaller than their equivalent GIFs, which allows them to load at lightning-fast speeds with better quality,” Imgur said Thursday in a blog post about GIFV. “By lowering bandwidth consumption, the change also optimizes Imgur for users on mobile. Rejoice!”

The GIFV images should play in animated form when shared on Twitter or Facebook, and Imgur lifted the upload file size limit from 5MB to 50MB. Support for the new images on popular browsers, including Android and iOS, is better and the fidelity is much more stable.

There are some hiccups. Currently, some devices using Google’s Android operating system drop the music when a GIFV starts, In addition, some GIFV files have shown problems with auto-start and frame-rate errors. But Imgur clearly feels GIFV hiccups are better than unfixable GIF problems.

“We hope these changes deliver an improved GIF experience on Imgur with more fun and less frustration, optimizing it for all of the changes that have happened on the Internet since the format was first introduced in 1987,” the company said.