EBU joins DASH Promoters Group

The EBU has joined a newly-formed group aiming to create momentum towards the broad adoption of the MPEG-DASH standard.

DASH (dynamic adaptive streaming over HTTP) is designed to address the growth of internet video by defining a universal delivery format. The DASH Promoters Group brings together a cross-section of media, telecoms and IT organisations.

The DASH standard is designed to solve streaming issues including intermittent stalls, poor video quality under changing network conditions and significant video start-up lag. The EBU said DASH is likely to become an important tool for its members as the internet grows in importance as a delivery channel both for catch-up services, second screen applications and other innovations.

The EBU said it would contribute to efforts to align ongoing DASH standards development, promote the use of common profiles across industry organisations, and facilitate interoperability tests and plug-fests to demonstrate the usability and completeness of the DASH standard.

The DASH Promoters Group is showing the first DASH live video channel playout at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week. The demo consists of a BBC World feed that is encoded by Harmonic in London in switchable H.264 streams using the DASH ISO Base Live Profile. The feed is transported via Akamai’s CDN to Barcelona and displayed via WiFi on a Qualcomm Snapdragon tablet with less than 20 seconds delay.