Dash for New Internet Video Delivery Format

RMN Digital | February 23, 2012 | Backend, Corporate, Enterprise, Enterprise Events, Europe, Events, Regions, Strategy | No Comments

A diverse group of technology leaders announced Wednesday the creation of the DASH Promoters Group, a new organization dedicated to driving the broad adoption of MPEG’s DASH (dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP) standard.

DASH is designed to address the dramatic growth of Internet video by defining a universal delivery format, which provides end users with the best possible video experience and dynamically adapts to changing network conditions as video streams to their devices.

[ Also Read: Comcast Streaming Video Service Xfinity Streampix ]

It incorporates all of the best elements of proprietary adaptive streaming solutions designed to solve the classic issues users see when they stream video: intermittent stalls, poor video quality under changing network conditions, and significant video start-up lag.

The membership of the DASH Promoters Group represents a significant cross section of major players across the multimedia and video delivery value chain.

Microsoft, Netflix and Qualcomm are the founding members. Other companies rounding out the membership at the time of this announcement include: Adobe, AEG Digital Media, Akamai, BuyDRM, Digital Rapids, Digital TV Labs, Dolby, EBU-UER, Elemental, Envivio, Ericsson, Harmonic, Intertrust, NDS, Packet Ship, Path1, RGB Networks, Samsung, Thomson, University of Klagenfurt and ZiXi.

[ Also Read: Future Spectrum Need for Mobile Broadband ]

With the formation of the Promoters Group and significant interest from a variety of companies, commercial DASH solutions are expected this year and the current members expect their ranks to swell.

As part of their strategy to accelerate DASH adoption, the Promoters Group will be demonstrating DASH streaming video at Mobile World Congress 2012 in Qualcomm’s exhibit.

The demo will showcase technology from several Promoters Group members and feature a live video stream encoded for DASH ISO-Base Live Profile by Harmonic, which will be ingested to Akamai’s Content Delivery Network and delivered to a Snapdragon processor-based mobile development platform from Qualcomm for playback. It was announced Wednesday, Feb.22.