A new alliance between tech leaders is attempting to revolutionize the way consumers stream media online. The Alliance for Open Media was founded by industry rivals Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Mozilla, and Netflix. Their goal is to collectively develop next-generation media formats in the public interest. Curiously, Apple and Facebook are not part of the group.
It is not often that industry rivals of this scale come together for a cause they mutually believe in. And in terms of relevance, this next generation video format will streamline services of its founding members whose influence on the world stage cannot be denied. This means a better online experience for the billions of Internet users in the world.
Their aim is to create a royalty-free video codec specification that is open-source. They also want to jointly create the binding specifications for the media format, content encryption, and adaptive streaming. According to their website, their future video format will be:
- Interoperable and open
- Optimized for the web
- Scalable to any modern device at any bandwidth
- Designed with a low computational footprint and optimized for hardware
- Capable of consistent, highest-quality, real-time video delivery
- Flexible for both commercial and non-commercial content, including user-generated content
It is fitting that the new alliance's first project is a new video codec. As it is, there are already existing royalty-free codec projects from some of the founding members. Mozilla has Daala, Cisco has Thor, and Google has VP9 and VP10. These will definitely be the basis for their unified video format of the future, as TechCrunch reports.
There are also underlying reasons behind the project, Wired reports. First is the need to retire Adobe Flash which is full of bugs and crashes constantly on many browers. Second is the reluctance of these companies to pay royalties to the likes of MPEG LA. Additionally, the added benefit to companies like Netflix will be copy protection-something they badly need.
