Open. Fast. Royalty-Free– so reads the tagline of Alliance for Open Media, a new open-source initiative launched by seven technology companies (Amazon, Cisco, Google, Intel Corporation, Microsoft, Mozilla and Netflix) for developing next-generation media formats, codecs and technologies.
As the Press Release notes: “The new Alliance is committing its collective technology and expertise to meet growing Internet demand for top-quality video, audio, imagery and streaming across devices of all kinds and for users worldwide.
The Alliance’s 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; and
- Flexible for both commercial and non-commercial content, including user-generated content.”
The Press Release states that additional information on the Alliance (a project of the Joint Development Corporation) will be released later this year.
Although the idea is still in its nascent stages currently, it appears to be an excellent initiative that prioritizes both innovation as well as exploring avenues for new ideas to be accessed more efficiently by a larger group of people.