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The Heavenly Standards Bodies
By Dr. Yuval Fisher, Chief Scientist, Envivio
 A cell phone made in Korea, working in Nebraska, on a network designed in Finland, is a marvel of global cooperation, facilitated by standards organizations whose logos and acronyms quietly pad the corners of product brochures. These organizations influence how billions of dollars in infrastructure and consumer electronics are spent. The organizations' membership is composed of companies that often compete with each other, yet cooperate to create international standards, because they have a vested interest in the success of a particular market or set of markets.
Manufacturers, systems integrators, and video services providers (whether they are a broadcaster, enterprise or telco operator) alike are affected by the success of standards bodies. Manufacturers and their partners can produce interoperable products, systems integrations can install solutions more quickly and easily, while customers can purchase new, enhanced or upgraded systems as needed without crippling their existing infrastructures.
Standards organizations provide cost saving benefits that include:
- Creating an 'eco-system' in which companies can focus on core competency and consumers can choose 'best of breed' products.
- Consolidating multiple interests to create better technologies through cooperation.
- Impose licensing conditions, ensuing that the technology can be licensed under Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (RAND) terms.
There are a myriad of standards organizations. The rest of this article provides a brief overview of the following organizations which focus on streaming and play back of digital video: 3GPP, 3GPP2, ATIS, AVS, DLNA, DVB, DVD Forum, IETF, ISMA, ISO/IEC MPEG, ITU, MPEGIF, OMA, and SMPTE.
 | The Moving Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) is part of the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). MPEG standardized one of the first video codecs (MPEG-1) and won an Emmy for MPEG-2, which is used in digital television and was the basis of a $10 Billion-a-year industry. MPEG-4 is the latest video codec. It actually consists of an older version (part 2) and a newer version (part 10, or AVC, or H.264), standardized jointly with the ITU. Other standards in MPEG's portfolio include the wildly popular MP3 (a part of the MPEG-1 standard), MPEG-7 a standard for tagging content with metadata for easy search and retrieval, and MPEG-21 a standard for packaging and transacting with digital items such as images, videos, or data. |
 | A separate organization, the MPEG Industry Forum (MPEGIF), an acronym of acronyms, works to further the adoption of MPEG standards. |
 | The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) creates Internet standards. IETF is technology-driven, not market-driven. It has put out many standards for the carriage of data (e.g. video, audio, email, instant messaging) on IP networks, and thus it complements MPEG. IETF standards form the basis of many other specifications, including some from DVB and ISMA. |
 | The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is a part of the United Nations that helps coordinate the government and private sector telecommunication industry. A part of the ITU (ITU-T) coordinates standards and is responsible for a large number of highly influential standards, in particular audio standards widely used in VoIP (e.g. G.7xx) and video standards used in video transmission and video conferencing (e.g. H.26x). Envivio products make heavy use of H.263 for video encoding of mobile, H.264 for both mobile and terrestrial video encoding, and H.323 for video conferencing. |
 | The Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) is an industry consortium whose goal is to accelerate the adoption and deployment of open standards for streaming rich media content such as video, audio, and associated data, over Internet protocols. ISMA has recently seen some adoption of its ISMACryp encryption standard by DVB-H and possibly soon by OMA. The ISMA 1.0 and 2.0 specifications are widely used on the Internet (e.g. in AppleŽ QuickTime). ISMA established an IPTV working group which defines specifications for RTP-based solutions. |
 | The Third Generation Partnership Program (3GPP) is a collaboration between various associations and standards bodies to create a global, third generation (meaning high bandwidth), mobile phone system specification. 3PGG specifications are broad, covering everything from transmission spectrum to encryption and codecs. The IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) specification from 3GPP has lately received a lot of attention. It is an architecture for controlling and tracking (i.e. charging for) IP-based services for both mobile and fixed-lines. |
 | 3GPP2 is a separate body, focused on similar specifications for CDMA networks. |
 | Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB) writes specifications for digital television. Specifications exist for satellite, cable, terrestrial (DVB-T) and handheld (DVB-H) devices. Of interest is DVB's foray into IPTV and RTP-based (DVB-IPI) streaming. Another interesting DVB specification is the Multimedia Home Platform (MHP). It is a Java-based middleware specification that shares some qualitative features with the EnvivioŽ MPEG-4 Systems approach. |
 | The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) focuses on application specifications that work independently of specific cellular network technology. OMA recently released a second specification for digital rights management which received a lot of attention, because it is expected that a large number of phones will support it. The success of this specification is driving its use for fixed-line IP services as well. |
 | The Digital Living Network Alliance's (DLNA) goal is to facilitate the exchange of digital content in the home. The idea is that a home network would interoperate with a PC, TV, stereo and DVD player to allow consumes to play movies, music, etc. on different devices. DLNA has published guidelines for products and is currently working on a more rigorous specification. |
 | The Digital Video Disc (DVD) forum is updating its specifications to accommodate HD displays. The Blue-ray forum has a competing high definition specification. Both specifications accommodate use of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 for video. |
 | The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) has a venerable history in specifying analog carriage of television signals. It is notable in the digital domain for its standardization of VC-1, the Microsoft Windows Media format. |
 | The Audio Video Standard (AVS) from China began in an attempt to reduce or eliminate the license fees paid to the west by Chinese manufacturers of digital audio-visual devices. As prices for hardware dropped, these fees became a substantial proportion of their cost. The specification is similar to H.264 for video, though quite different than AAC for audio. The Chinese government negotiated reduced license fees domestically, but fees for International (to China) use of AVS are not resolved and are not expected to be similar to the domestic fees. |
 | The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) is a US-focused organization which recently started an IPTV Interoperability Forum (IIF) and published architecture and digital right managment requirements. Since ATIS's membership consists of tier-1 telcos, system integrators and equipment manufacturers, they are considered a powerful player in IPTV standardization. |
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