Industry Leaders Transform DASH Promoters Group into DASH Industry Forum to Further Accelerate the MPEG-DASH Standard for Adaptive Video Streaming

AMSTERDAM, Sept. 10, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Today the members of DASH Promoters Group announced the establishment of the DASH Industry Forum (DASH-IF) to advocate and accelerate further adoption of the MPEG-DASH (Dynamic Adaptive Streaming over HTTP) standard.  The MPEG-DASH standard is designed to address the dramatic growth of broadband video by defining a universal delivery format that provides end users with the best possible video experience by dynamically adapting to changing network conditions.  DASH-IF will promote the adoption of MPEG-DASH, publish interoperability and deployment guidelines, facilitate interoperability tests and collaborate with standard bodies and industry consortia in aligning ongoing DASH standards development and the use of common profiles across industry organizations.

The DASH Promoters Group was established in February 2012, by several industry leaders who contributed to the MPEG-DASH standard. Since its membership grew rapidly to over 60 members, the group believed that a formal entity could better serve the promotion of MPEG-DASH and therefore, established the DASH-IF.

"The rapid growth of DASH-PG and now DASH-IF membership is a clear signal attesting to the industry's  level of interest and eagerness to deploy standards based interoperable streaming solutions based on MPEG-DASH," said Dr. Iraj Sodagar, the Chairman of the Board and President of DASH-IF.  "We believe the market for broadband video streaming will exponentially grow through the widespread adoption of MPEG-DASH since it is a viable and true open standard specification that incorporates state of art technologies and DASH-IF is taking all necessary steps to catalyze such wide adoption."

"The adoption of DASH will allow operators to enhance their delivery of personalized content over existing broadband networks and, at the same time, will allow content owners to offer their assets over unmanaged networks with the optimal user viewing experience," said David Price, Board Member and Treasurer of DASH-IF and Head of Media Business Development for Ericsson.

"The formation of the DASH-IF is an important milestone," said Rob Chandhok, senior vice president of software strategy for Qualcomm Incorporated and president of Qualcomm Internet Services.  "Qualcomm helped form the DASH Promoters Group and has been deeply engaged in the effort to make DASH the standard for video streaming as its efficiencies are particularly important in mobile wireless scenarios.  We recognize that support in commercial products and services is fundamental to successful standardization efforts.  To that end, Qualcomm is enabling the first device-side implementation of DASH for mobile and we expect commercial device and network-side offerings from multiple vendors to be available next year."

"Akamai is encouraged by the rapid growth and interest in MPEG-DASH and looks forward to accelerating the transition of DASH from paper to practice," said Will Law, Principal Media Architect, Akamai and Board Member and Secretary, DASH-IF.

DASH-IF is an incorporated non-profit organization overseen by its Board of Directors and it's membership represents a significant cross section of major players across the multimedia and video delivery value chain. The founding members are Akamai, Ericsson, Microsoft, Netflix, Qualcomm and Samsung. Current membership at the time of this announcement also includes: Adobe Systems Inc, Allegro DVT, AuthenTec, BuyDRM, castLabs, Cisco, CodeShop BV, Digital Primates, Digital TV Group, Dolby Labs, DTS Inc, Elemental Technologies, Envivio Inc, Espial Group Inc, European Broadcast Union, Fraunhofer IIS, Harmonic Inc, Huawei Technologies, Imagine Communications, Intel Corp, InterDigital Communications, Irdeto B.V., Livestream, mDialog, Media Excel, Nagravision SA, Path 1, RealNetworks, RGB Networks, SeaWell Networks, Sorenson Media, University of British Columbia, ICICS, Verimatrix Inc, VisualOn Inc, Wowza Media Systems and ZiXi.

As part of their strategy to accelerate DASH adoption, DASH-IF members will be demonstrating DASH streaming solutions at the 2012 International Broadcast Conference in Amsterdam.

About the DASH Industry Forum 

The DASH Industry Forum (DASH-IF) is a non-profit organization for the promotion of MPEG's DASH specification (ISO/IEC 23009) within the industry and with other standards organizations and consortia.   To learn more about the DASH-IF, please visit dashif.org.

Contacts:
Peggy Moloney – Interim Executive Director
+1-425-707-1911 
Peggy.Moloney@microsoft.com