Netflix, Amazon, Google, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft and Mozilla have formed the Alliance for Open Media with a goal to boost the quality of online video.
The 7 internet and tech giants will work together to develop open-source, royalty-free media formats and codecs to create new video compression technology designed to deliver web optimized, ultra high definition video and other media to smartphones, computers, streaming-media devices, TVs and video game consoles within the next two years.
According to the site, “the Alliance for Open Media is a project of the Joint Development Foundation, an independent non-profit organization that provides the corporate and legal infrastructure to enable groups to establish and operate standards and source code development collaborations.”
The non-profit group’s home page reads:
“From the companies behind the open web, we bring you media the way it should be… Open.”
The Alliance agrees their initial focus is to deliver a next-generation video format that is:
- 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
In a blog post, Mozilla CTO David Bryant explains that teaming up allows them to share the legal load and responsibility of creating the next-generation video format:
“The Alliance provides a venue for us to share the legal legwork without having to worry about it being used against us down the road. That distributes the load, allows us to innovate faster and cheaper, and gives everyone more confidence that we are really producing a royalty-free codec.”
