Category: Broadband Policy
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It Is Time to Standardize a Royalty-Free Video Codec
I’ve been saying for a while that the best way out of the Web video codec mess is formal standardization of a royalty-free video codec and that formal standards groups like MPEG and others should step up to the task. Of course, I mean a real, bona-fide standardization process, not a dubious rubber-stamping “ratification” nor…
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MPEG Moves Forward With Royalty-Free Standard, Approves Call For Evidence
MPEG has moved forward with a royalty-free standard activity, approving a “Call for Evidence”, the typical first step in the MPEG standardization process. The MPEG Call for Evidence is referenced in the public Resolutions of the just-completed 93rd MPEG meeting, which also hint at an upcoming Call For Proposals. The Call for Evidence follows the…
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MPEG Issues Resolution on Type-1 (Royalty-Free) Standardization
MPEG — Working Group 11 of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 — has issued a resolution seeking active participation in developing a Type-1 (royalty-free) video coding standard. “Given that there is a desire for using royalty free video coding technologies for some applications such as video distribution over the Internet, MPEG wishes to enquire of National…
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Four Ways to Tell if the FCC’s Open Set Top Interface is On Track
It is gratifying to see the FCC Broadband Plan include an open set top recommendation (4.12), firmly grounded in the FCC’s continuing responsibility to implement section 629 of the 1996 Telco Act to “assure the commercial availability” of TV devices from retail and unaffiliated sources. And welcome words in the frank acknowledgment that over 14…
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Gateway To Nowhere: Standards-Bashing Won’t Fix Set Top Gridlock
Standards “would thwart, not advance, innovation” and “entail crippling delays” because they are “extremely time consuming, often divisive, and sometimes used by one faction to block the progress of another or to promote its own intellectual property portfolio”. It would be easy to dismiss comments like these in the Cable industry’s latest response to the…
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FCC Video Device Innovation Notice: We Need an Open Video Internet!
The FCC Video Device Innovation Notice [1] asks one of the most fundamentally central questions to the prospect of not only a viable Broadband Plan for America, but also to the very future of the Open Internet that has revolutionized communications systems of all humanity: “How could the Commission develop a standard that would achieve…
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Royalty free codec standards — don’t settle for less
After a lively debate, the IETF appears to be moving forward with a royalty-free audio codec standardization activity. Here’s to its successful launch and positive outcome. I’ve put a brief summary at the mpegrf.com site, and there is a good summary here. The group’s email discussion alias is here — and my view, expressed there…
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“Conflict Through Consensus”: Europe’s Hybrid Broadbanders Paint on UK’s Project Canvas
A “Julius Stonian” observation: standards groups aren’t “consensus organizations”, they are political organizations. Winners declare their way the “consensus”, and changes in political context shift the “consensus”. So reflects calls in several slides at yesterday’s Hybrid Broadcast-Broadband (HBB) workshop to look deeper into Intellectual Property Rights and other control points in the new “broadcast+broadband” (aka…
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“Trust But Verify”: IPR & BBC’s Project Canvas
I have filed comments in the UK Project Canvas public consultation. To catch up on the UK context with global implications, watch James Murdock’s mesmerizing anti-BBC screed, and say… “This is the BBC.” Perhaps no other single phrase has broadcast more meaning to more people in the great call to communicate that has gripped our…
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6 Things You Should Know About Open Video & Open Standards
It is very exciting to see the “Open Video” movement taking off and finding voice with the upcoming Open Video Conference. This well-earned “open breakthrough” has been a long time coming. After all, open standards, and particularly royalty-free standards, are the very foundation of the Open Internet as we know it, and Internet leaders are…