ISMA, MPEGIF, OIPF, HbbTV, Xiph

The Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) was Founded in December 2000 as a non-profit corporation by Apple Computer, Cisco Systems, Kasenna, Philips, and Sun Microsystems.

In 2010 ISMA was merged with the MPEG Industry Forum (MPEGIF).

The mission of ISMA was to accelerate the market adoption of open standards for streaming and progressive download of rich media over all types of Internet Protocols (IP). ISMA has released several specifications for the transport of rich media over IP, the main ones are :

  • ISMA 1.0 – details how to stream MPEG-4 Part 2 video (Simple Profile and Advanced Simple Profile) over IP networks.
  • ISMA 2.0 – details how to stream H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video and HE-AAC audio over IP networks.
  • ISMACryp – specifies an end-to-end encryption system for ISMA 1.0 and 2.0 streams.

The MPEG Industry Forum (MPEGIF), founded in 2000, was a non-profit consortium dedicated to further the adoption of MPEG Standards, by establishing them as well accepted and widely used standards among creators of content, developers, manufacturers, providers of services, and end users.

The group was involved in many tasks, including promotion of MPEG standards (MPEG-4, MPEG-4 AVC / H.264, MPEG-7 and MPEG-21), developing MPEG certification for products, organising educational events and collaborating on development of new de facto MPEG standards.

In June 2012 the MPEG Industry Forum closed its operation and merged its remaining assets with that of the Open IPTV Forum.

The Open IPTV Forum (OIPF) was formed in march 2007 to enable and accelerate creation of a mass market for IPTV by defining and publishing free-of-charge, standards-based specifications for end-end IPTV services of the future. The founding members Samsung, Ericsson, Sony Corporation, France Telecom, Telecom Italia and Philips have since been joined by other leading industry stakeholders.

The OIPF specifications are available on the OIPF website which hosts also the ISMA technical specifications and the MPEGIF informations.

The OIPF collaborates with the Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV or “HbbTV” consortium, a major new pan-European initiative aimed at harmonising the broadcast and broadband delivery of entertainment to the end consumer through connected TVs and set-top boxes.

The Xiph.Org Foundation (open source community) is a non-profit corporation dedicated to protecting the foundations of Internet multimedia from control by private interests. Xiph.Org hosts a collection of open source, multimedia-related projects. The goal is to put the foundation standards of Internet audio and video into the public domain, where all Internet standards belong.