Video streaming has become more important for many platforms on the internet, and it’s become even more important that we have a standard for scalability across devices and bandwidth. This is where Alliance for Open Media comes in. The group is an open-source project that has engaged the interest of many tech companies to come together and figure out how to create a next-gen video format that can help manage devices and bandwidth.
Noted by CNET, Apple just joined the Alliance at a founding member tier, which is the board. We checked archive.org and confirmed that Apple just recently joined in the past week. We’ve reached out to Apple for comment and will update this post if we hear anything back.
Apple joins other founding members of the group including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Cisco, ARM, Microsoft, Mozilla, Intel, IBM, Netflix, and NVIDIA. AV1, the first video streaming standard by the group, was announced back in April of last year.
The AV1 codec is used to compress video before it’s sent over the network, making it much smaller to transport, and better for usage over a phone’s data plan, and all without reducing quality. Having Apple included in the AV1 venture will help it compete with other video standards like the one supported by Cisco and Mozilla, as noted by CNET.
