Adobe Flash has long held the title as the Internet’s go-to platform for video playback. Its success was due in large part to the program not requiring much computer power to run well.
Nowadays, it’s seen as a security hazard, with major Internet browsers Firefox and Chrome implementing plugins to block Flash by default.
To provide users with a more secure alternative, seven of the world’s biggest technology companies are banding together to create an open-source, royalty-free video format capable of streaming high-quality video content across multiple devices.
These companies include Google, Mozilla, Microsoft, Netflix, Amazon, Cisco, and Intel Corporation. Together, they’ve formed the Alliance For Open Media.
Since the new platform is royalty-free, just about anyone will be able to use the codec for their own software; in fact, the Alliance is already inviting additional parties interested in video to come help with the development of this new platform.
“[T]he Web doesn’t stand still and neither do we,” wrote Mozilla’s interim CTO and Platform Engineering Vice President, David Bryant, in a blog post. “As resolutions and framerates increase, the need for more advanced codecs with ever-better compression ratios will only grow.”
While many of the Alliance’s founding members have already developed their own proprietary video codecs, Bryant explained that these formats will “combine to form an excellent basis for a truly world-class royalty-free codec.”
There are additional goals the Alliance is hoping to achieve with this initiative that go beyond the creation and implementation of a new video streaming platform for the Internet. For one, they want their solution to be something that is capable of working on a bevy of devices. Additionally, the codec should be able to work just as well for commercial-generated content as it does for that which is produced by Internet users for personal use.
Absentees from this Alliance worth noting: Apple and Facebook, both of which are working on their own solutions.
Read more about the Alliance’s initiative via the group’s site.
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