Growing VR Industry Forum to present its work and plans at NAB 2017

Cross-industry membership turns CES talk into action

Lincoln(20 Apr 2017)

Las Vegas, 20 April 2017 – Following its successful launch at CES in January this year, the Virtual Reality Industry Forum Inc. (VRIF) will hold an open meeting at NAB 2017 at the Las Vegas Convention Center on Sunday, April 23rd from 1pm to 2pm, where the Forum will discuss its progress on ongoing work as well as plans for future activities with potential members and other interested parties.

VRIF, composed of a growing number of participating companies and organizations from a broad range of sectors in the industry, advocates consensus around industry standards for the creation of an interoperable, end-to-end ecosystem for high-quality audio-visual VR services.

At NAB, the Forum will present the progressing work that is happening in the Forum and its various Working Groups. “At CES, we discussed our plans. At NAB we will be discussing how we have been putting these plans into action,” said Rob Koenen, VRIF President. “Our aim is to come together to speed up the adoption of VR content consumption and services by ensuring a good consumer experience. VRIF has an end-to-end perspective – from the production through to playback on consumer devices. Our multifaceted Industry Guidelines will cover the VR production, delivery and consumption chain, helping ensure best practices are used and interoperability is maintained.”

These industry guidelines aim to avoid fragmentation of VR caused by closed systems and proprietary solutions, and the Forum expects to publish the first guidelines later this year. Building on open international standards, they will address elements of the end-to-end VR chain including production, distribution, playback and security. VRIF also seeks to make content and tools available, to help industry test and deploy interoperable services.

VRIF’s Open Session on Sunday April 23rd is open to any party that wants to learn more about the Forum’s activities and becoming a member.

Many VRIF members will be showing VR applications and technology at NAB; a list can be found here: http://www.vr-if.org/events/vr-industry-forum-nab-event/

VRIF’s members are: CableLabs, Dolby Laboratories, DTG, DTS, EBU, Ericsson AB, Fraunhofer, Harmonic, Huawei, Intel, Nokia Technologies, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., Sky, TNO (Charter Members); Akamai Technologies Inc., ARRIS International plc, b<>com, Brightcove, Irdeto, NAGRAVISION, S.A., Sony Pictures, Technicolor R&D France, Verizon, and Viaccess-Orca (Contributor members); ATEME, Baylor University, Bitmovin, Cinova, Ittiam, MovieLabs, NAB PILOT, NGCodec, Orah, Vantrix Corporation, and Whistling Woods (Associate Members).

Membership and further information can be found at the website at www.vr-if.org.