MPEG DASH Is the Future, Here's What You Need to Know

If you're working in online video and you're not sure what MPEG DASH is, this video is an easy way to get up to speed. It's important, as you're going to be hearing a lot more about DASH.

At the recent Streaming Media East conference in New York City, a panel of industry heavyweights talked about what MPEG DASH is and what it means for the future of adaptive streaming. Attendees heard perspectives from Microsoft, Adobe, Akamai, Viacom, Qualcomm, and Ericsson.

Interoperability is key, said Kevin Towes, senior product manager at Adobe, explaining why MPEG DASH is important.

"Interoperability solves two primary problems," began Towes. "One, for those of you building services and supporting and supplying technologies to the market, which is reduced costs in your development and interoperability with other devices. For those of you delivering content and licensing content, interoperability allows you to select one of those 50 percent of the people in the room [who are building services] to do one task versus another task, whether it's content packaging, encoding, encryption, content delivery, OVP [online video platform]. Interoperability is the key way that we drive the video industry forward."

Adobe has been able to pivot quickly to market realities, and is a big proponent of MPEG DASH.

"Adobe has invested heavily in MPEG DASH. We believe this is the format and the change that the market needs to grow," said Towes. "The past five years, the innovations have been staggering. From Adobe's point of view, RTMP, RTMPE, H.264, Flash Player, all of these technologies have led us to a road where we sit today, which is video is important. Broadcasters understand that, distributors understand that. There's a revenue opportunity available for everybody in this room. And now we need to make this work. We need to make it work with lower costs, more video, higher quality video in a way that works on all these devices as they grow and adapt to their own market."

For much more on MPEG DASH and the future of adaptive streaming, watch the full panel discussion below.

Troy Dreier's article first appeared on OnlineVideo.net