MPEG Industry Forum

Los Angeles, 17 June 2023 - On 9 and 10 June, the MPEG-4 Industry Forum (M4IF), Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA), and International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) hosted a "licensing discussion and education forum" in order to facilitate dialogue on the licensing of the next-generation, advanced video coding standard. This standard, ITU-T H.264 / ISO/IEC MPEG-4 Advanced Video Coding, often called AVC/H.264, was jointly developed by the ITU-T SG16 (VCEG, Video Coding Experts Group) and ISO/IEC MPEG (Moving Picture Experts Group). Potential licensees engaged in an open exchange of perspectives on possible licensing structures and offered potential licensors their views on such possible licensing structures.

AVC/H.264 represents the state of the art in video coding technology and is widely expected to receive broad adoption in the consumer electronics, PC, broadcast, mobile, wireless, videotelephony, conferencing, and streaming industries. AVC/H.264 has already been ratified as an international standard by the ITU and is in the final stage of ratification within ISO/IEC.

The two-day forum was attended by 56 participants representing 45 companies and organizations from numerous industries worldwide. The forum organizers believe the meeting will aid in the goal of achieving timely access to licenses for patents that are essential to the implementation of the new video coding standard under reasonable and competitive terms.

[NB: An summary of what was said during this meeting is here]

About IMTC

The International Multimedia Telecommunications Consortium (IMTC) is an industry-leading non-profit organization whose mission is to promote, encourage, and facilitate the development and implementation of interoperable multimedia conferencing solutions based on open international standards. The IMTC hosts interoperability testing events and demonstrations throughout the world. Over the past 3 years the IMTC has hosted more than 60 interoperability-testing events to test T.120, H.320, H.323, H.324, SIP, and Voice over IP products and services with each other. The IMTC Board of Directors includes representatives from Cisco Systems, Dilithium Networks, France Telecom, Nokia, Polycom, RADVISION, Ridgeway, Siemens AG, Sony, Tandberg, Telverse. The San Ramon, California-based consortium comprises close to 80 member organizations from around the globe. Membership is open to any interested party, including vendors of audio, document, and video conferencing hardware and software; academic institutions; government agencies; and non-profit organizations. "The IMTC is making Rich Media happen Anywhere, Anytime." More information on IMTC can be found at http://www.imtc.org

About ISMA

The Internet Streaming Media Alliance is a non-profit corporation founded in 2000 by Apple (AAPL), Cisco (CSCO), IBM (IBM), Kasenna, Inc., Philips (PHG), and Sun Microsystems (SUNW) to accelerate the market adoption of a universal, open standard for streaming rich media over the Internet Protocol (IP). Today, the ISMA is a diverse alliance with representatives from all points of the streaming workflow. In addition to the founders, the following companies are members of the ISMA: Analog Devices, AOL Time Warner, Bitband Technologies, Coding Technologies, Content Guard, Dolby Laboratories, Envivio, France Telecom, Fraunhofer Institute, Hitachi, iVast, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Ltd., Nagravision, National Semiconductor, NDS Technologies, Neomagic, Network Appliance, net&tv;, Nextreaming, Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd., On2 Technologies, Optibase, Sharp Laboratories, Sony Corporation, Telecom Italia, Thomson, University of Washington, VBrick Systems, and Volera. More information can be accessed at http://www.isma.tv/

About M4IF

M4IF represents_about 100 companies from diverse industries across North America, Europe and Asia, addressing MPEG-4 adoption issues that go beyond the charter of ISO/IEC MPEG.

Activities of the forum include an interoperability program, certification, working groups, access to ISO/MPEG committee members, and an annual conference (WEMP-4). For more information visit: http://www.m4if.org

For more information, contact Paul Ritchie: Tel: +1 925 275 6654, Email: [email protected]

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