Online streaming is gaining popularity with seemingly each year, so tech titans gather to create a new media format that would support it at the highest quality with the lowest power cost.
Technology is rapidly advancing, and video quality is reaching untouchable heights that browsers simply cannot support at their fullest potential or without getting the dreaded buffering sign we’ve grown to hate. It makes for frustrating experiences that can certainly become more frequent through the years.
So, seven major companies are collecting their efforts and ample resources, “in the public interest”, in order to create a powerful mix with vast potential.
Microsoft, Amazon, Netflix, Intel, Mozilla, and Cisco have officially became part of the new Alliance for Open Media, a mixed-and-matched organization that will cater to the increasing user needs.
According to the executive director of the Alliance for Open Media, Gabe Frost, customer expectations are continually growing, so satisfying our needs for high quality video streaming directly from the browser greatly requires a new codec and tweaking.
Platforms such as video streaming website Twitch is seeing increasing popularity, with both users, professional gamers and, even higher, professional organizations calling to its services for providing their followers good quality live shows of their game play or event. The biggest gaming league, in fact, eSports frequently chooses Twitch as its main platform.
No matter what or where, even the highest quality streaming should run smoothly in order for users to properly enjoy the experience, so the seven tech giants have partnered in order to create an open source, royalty-free software, that will allow for high-quality video streaming, perfectly optimized for the web.
The Alliance for Open Media has stressed on the flexibility of their project that will be malleable for individuals, organizations, commercial use and non-commercial use without royalties, meaning that they would not be required to buy or pay for any rights, in order to avoid the license and patent issues that often slow process of development.
Even more, the codec will be entirely free, and reportedly will arrive with the next Apache License 2.0. According to the furious seven, their expertise and resources will be put together in order to create a “top-quality video, audio, imagery, and streaming across devices of all kinds and for users worldwide.”.
Ranging from PCs, gaming consoles, tablets, smartphones, TV’s, and streaming devices, all will be able to make use of the new format, and more importantly for companies such as Netflix, they will be assured of a copy protection system, which will stop others from stealing their format.
No official date has been confirmed by the organization, but they reportedly seek and 2016 or 2017 release.
Image source: seamsoft.com
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