Farewell from the MPEG Industry Forum

The following email was issued by the MPEG Industry Forum today:

To All of Our Colleagues that have been involved with or connected to the MPEG Industry Forum over the past 10 years.

We have “declared victory” and the activities of the MPEG Industry Forum are now being wound up. By the end of this month all remaining assets will be put into the hands of the Open IPTV Forum where you can access these through http://www.oipf.tv/mpegif. When this forum was first initiated in June 2000 it was at a time of great fragmentation in this industry. As silicon , continued to advance alternatives to MPEG-2 emerged in many forms. Our task was to educate and evangelize an emerging standards based solution that became known as MPEG-4 Part 10, aka AVC, aka H.264. Our efforts drove in many directions including many informational events – the MPEG IF Master Class series – and, crucially, a series of important interoperability test rounds combined with some very active tech-lists (that will now be closed on July 1st). Slowly but surely H.264 gained mind share and then market share and today is clearly the dominant codec of choice replacing MPEG-2 around the world. Hence the declaration of victory.

We would like to take this opportunity to wholeheartedly thank everyone who has contributed to the Forum over these past 10 years. This includes past Presidents, Rob Koenen and Sebastian Moeritz, current board members Yuval Fisher and Sean McCarthy, past board members including Takuyo Kogure, Leonardo Chiariglione, Tim Schaaff, Rich Mavrogeanes, Shawn Ambwani, Jan van der Meer, Sang-Il Park, Peter Schirling, and Stefan Geyersberger, all the people who contributed by speaking at our Master Classes too many to list here, all the many sponsoring companies that have made our MasterClasses and Networking Parties such a huge success, the Open IPTV Forum – the custodians of our legacy, and last, but by no means least, our heartfelt thanks go to the good people at AMSL especially Nicola Wissler, who has managed the secretariat function of this forum over the past 6 years.

Our sincerest thanks to you all,

David Price (Ericsson): President

Prof. Sebastian Moeritz (St. Petersburg University): Chairman

Dr. Yuval Fisher (RGB Networks): Board Member

Dr. Sean McCarthy: (Motorola): Board Member