Responding to a recent survey indicating a strong need for open standards to drive the IPTV market, the Internet Streaming Media Alliance (ISMA) is taking the initiative to bring the industry together with a global symposium focusing on end-to-end system interoperability. The June 8 ISMA International IPTV Summit in Chicago will be a rare opportunity for industry leaders at both ISMA member and non-member companies to dialogue on growing the IPTV market by establishing open standards and to influence the future work of ISMA.

Among the non-member participants, Harris Corp.'s Marlis Humphrey, director of growth programs and commercial segments growth, is attending because, "we believe open standards are essential to a healthy market. For the IPTV market to develop, single-vendor, proprietary systems must evolve into interoperable solutions that will benefit IPTV service providers and consumers."

The June meeting is the first in a series of global summits the Alliance is organizing, with similar events to follow later this year in Europe and Asia. Structured as an interactive forum of senior engineering and business development executives, the North American meeting will feature research group MRG, Inc. providing an analysis of the existing landscape of IPTV standards. Selected companies also are being invited to report on their standards-based deployments or to suggest a direction for future work.

IPTV Industry Looking for Open Standards
Yuval Fisher, ISMA liaison officer and chief scientist at Envivio, Inc., said, "Open standards enable faster product development, reduce risk and allow more choices for best-of-breed integration. ISMA is taking the lead in driving end-to-end multimedia integration based on our charter to promote open standards for streaming over the Internet," he said.

The Alliance organized the Summit in response to an independent survey it commissioned from MRG earlier this year. The results clearly indicated that vendors, service providers, integrators and content providers support the development of open standards that will improve system interoperability. Most of the respondents said they were looking to trade associations to drive system integration across the industry.

ISMA already has an existing infrastructure in place to accomplish this work and a core expertise in IPTV. ISMA first looks to integrate existing standards and best practices to solve industry needs, but also has the capability to develop technical specifications. The Alliance's flagship ISMA 2.0 is just such an integration specification, providing end-to-end interoperable streaming and storage of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 and MPEG-4 AAC. Its ISMACryp 1.0 and 1.1 specifications cover end-to-end content protection. ISMA also holds regular interoperability testing, has a structured product conformance program, and has an active market awareness program around open standards and products which implement ISMA specifications.

The half-day ISMA IPTV Summit will be June 8 in Chicago starting at 8:30 a.m. with a complimentary networking breakfast and will end with lunch. There is no cost to attend but reservations are required. More details are available from ISMA Executive Director Michael LoBue, CAE, by phone 1-415-561-6276 or by email at LoBue@ISMA.tv. A summary of the MRG IPTV Standards Survey commissioned by ISMA is available at www.ISMA.tv with the full 100-page report available to members only.