Open IPTV Forum and MPEG Industry Forum to merge

Industry standards bodies the Open IPTV Forum (OIPF) and MPEG Industry Forum are to merge, with the assets of the MPEG Industry Forum being merged into the OIPF.

This latest expansion of the OIPF follows its 2011 takeover of the former Broadcast Mobile Convergence Forum. According to the two bodies, the merger of the OIPF with the MPEG Industry Forum represents a natural consolidation that reflects cross-industry consensus on fundamental technologies. The enlarged OIPF will focus on enabling interoperability across connected consumer devices.

Nilo Mitra, president of the OIPF said: “We are pleased to contribute towards this consolidation of the work from the MPEG IF and welcome those additional members from the MPEG IF who join our efforts. The end result is that the Open IPTV Forum will be an even stronger and more vigorous industry body, representing all constituents and contributors within the ecosystem of businesses creating and delivering the next generation of television entertainment”

David Price, president of the MPEG Industry Forum and head of business development, compression at Ericsson, said: “When the MPEG Industry Forum was founded the future of IP based video technology was far from clear, except that the industry knew that conventional TV services were going to be radically and permanently changed. At the centre of this revolution was the emergence of new, highly efficient codecs that enabled new business models such as TV over DSL and broadband television. As the premier industry body advocating adoption of standards based technologies with over 100 companies in its membership, MPEG IF used educational MasterClasses at major trade shows and nine rounds of interoperability testing to show that MPEG-4 AVC (H.264) was the clear successor to MPEG-2 for the next generation of services. We are pleased to declare ‘victory’ and merge the assets of the forum into the Open IPTV Forum going forward.”