DASH Industry Forum (DASH-IF) Becomes Part of the SVTA

FREMONT, Calif. — July 23, 2024 — The Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA), a global technical association developing solutions to address critical technical challenges in delivering a high-quality video experience at scale, announces that the DASH Industry Forum (DASH-IF) is now part of the SVTA. The newly formed DASH-IF Working Group will continue the on-going work that was carried out by the DASH-IF association.

DASH-IF: An Association with Historical Significance

The DASH-IF association has been in operation for 12 years, developing technical specifications, tools, and the dash.js player to support and enable the implementation of the MPEG-DASH format. Initiated by Qualcomm, Netflix, Microsoft, Akamai, Ericsson and Samsung in 2011, around 100 companies have participated in the organization’s work since, including streaming video platforms, CDNs, network operators, mobile ecosystem giants, technology providers, as well as research and academic institutions. Through their efforts, DASH-IF accomplished much over the past decade to help the industry use the DASH format in production environments. For a complete list visit https://dashif.org/members/.

“Over the past 12 years, DASH-IF has emerged as a highly influential organization in the media streaming industry,” says Iraj Sodagar, former DASH-IF President. “By bringing together major industry players, DASH-IF has developed specifications, guidelines, conformance tools, test vectors, and open-source software—all provided free of charge to the entire industry. Additionally, DASH-IF collaborated with standards development organizations (SDOs) and consortia for advancing the MPEG DASH standard as well as promoting its harmonized adoption across various industry sectors. The DASH-IF story serves as a compelling case study, demonstrating how an industry forum can revolutionize the entire ecosystem, benefiting both the industry and the end consumers.”

A Combined Approach To Improve Interoperability

While DASH-IF has been singularly focused on the MPEG DASH, adjacent standards for ingest and key exchange, and dash.js player as its reference implementation, the SVTA addresses a wide variety of technical challenges across the streaming workflow. With DASH-IF and their efforts now part of the SVTA, there can be a much tighter integration between their laser focus on MPEG DASH and adjacent technologies and the more generalized efforts of the SVTA. This can help reduce fragmentation in streaming workflows. Consider content steering for example. The SVTA is working on broad, industry-wide solutions, but DASH-IF has its own in-depth approach. Bringing DASH-IF within the SVTA family allows its task forces to work more closely with SVTA working groups to ensure alignment. This, in turn, reduces the complexity for streaming providers who utilize DASH along with other formats, or technologies, that may already be aligned with SVTA guidance.

“Having DASH-IF operating within the SVTA will only benefit the industry,” says Jason Thibeault, CEO of SVTA. “By bringing more of the significant work underneath a single banner, in this case the SVTA, we can create an even larger environment of collaboration and move the industry closer towards a less complicated, more interoperable future.”

“I strongly believe that at this stage, the industry is better served by a smaller number of consortia with wide industry participation,” says Alex Giladi, President of DASH-IF. “DASH-IF is going to continue its excellent technical work under the wider umbrella of SVTA. I am looking forward to working closely with SVTA experts and expect the new DASH-IF working group to benefit from a wider variety of perspectives the SVTA brings to the table.”

Ensuring A Productive Future for DASH

Bringing DASH-IF under the SVTA umbrella is not intended to diminish the work they were doing or the DASH format itself. Rather, by joining forces with the SVTA, DASH-IF gains access to resources it did not have before, enabling expansion of the group’s work. For the remainder of 2024, DASH-IF will operate as it had before, just as a working group within the SVTA while having access to the other SVTA groups and resources. All existing DASH-IF task forces will operate as SVTA sub-groups, and all group leaders will continue in their respective roles.

“The work of DASH-IF and SVTA has been critical in providing the tools, resources, specs and standards to help ensure a seamless, reliable and consistent video streaming experience for consumers across the globe,” said Elad Nafshi, Chief Network Officer, Comcast. “Aligning together under the same umbrella will unify and strengthen the work of both consortiums, and the industry, and create the framework for greater innovation and opportunity as entertainment consumption continues to evolve and more video is delivered in IP in the future.”

Thomas Stockhammer and Iraj Sodagar to Receive DASH Industry Forum Leadership Award

DASH-IF is awarding both Thomas and Iraj for their work and efforts over the past 12 years of DASH-IF

• Thomas will receive his award for his ongoing contributions and leadership. As the designated lead from founding member Qualcomm, Thomas worked with the DASH-IF Interoperability working group since its establishment. He will continue to act as a co-chair in the new SVTA DASH-IF Working Group. He has been an editor or a major contributor to virtually all DASH-IF documents.
• Iraj was the president of the DASH Industry Forum for most of the time the forum existed. He was the leader and an evangelist of the organization.

The SVTA includes member companies from around the world and throughout the streaming video ecosystem. For a current list of member companies, visit https://www.svta.org/svta-members/.

About the Streaming Video Technology Alliance

The Streaming Video Technology Alliance is the global technical association addressing challenges of delivering high-quality video at scale. By providing a forum for collaboration across the streaming video ecosystem, the SVTA member companies can develop technical specifications, educational whitepapers, best practices, and software code which address those challenges. Over 100 companies including network operators, content rights holders, OTT platforms, service providers, and technology vendors participate in bi-weekly working group activities and quarterly face-to-face meetings. For more information on the SVTA, the Technical Groups, or to inquire about becoming a member, visit https://www.svta.org.

About the DASH Industry Forum

Formally launched in 2012, DASH Industry Forum (DASH-IF) has been advocating the use of the MPEG DASH standard for media streaming applications. Throughout the years, DASH-IF has provided the implementation guidelines and industry specifications for the aligned interoperable adoption of the DASH standard, as well as providing conformance and test tools and test vectors, content generation and authoring tools, dash.js reference players, and many related specification, guidelines, and specifications. The DASH-IF also works with various consortia in the harmonized adoption of DASH in their specification, avoiding market segmentation and incompatibilities between different consortia specs. The industry has widely used DASH-IF’s dash.js open-source player as a reference and production player. DASH-IF continues to develop guidelines and specifications, software tools, and test vector databases and collaborate with consortia and standardization bodies, to further foster DASH adoption for new applications and services. For more information, please visit www.dashif.org.

Press Contact

Jason Thibeault
Streaming Video Technology Alliance
pr@svta.org