The Streaming Video Technology Alliance (SVTA) has announced it is in the process of merging with the UHD Forum.
The boards of both organisations are yet to sign off on the final terms and documents, but SVTA CEO Jason Thibeault said the organisation is “excited to be able to welcome the UHD Forum into the SVTA family sometime this year”.
In a blog post, Thibeault said that while the UHD Forum has historically been more “broadcast focused”, the two worlds of broadcast and streaming are really one world of content distribution.
“Content…weaves together all of the activities and technologies across traditional broadcast and streaming. And that is precisely why we decided to bring the UHD Forum into the SVTA,” he added.
“While the exact type of integration is yet to be determined (we imagine there will be some kind of top-level Working Group, something like ‘Content Quality and Production’, under which the UHD Forum, and perhaps other existing SVTA Working Groups, will be situated), the proverbial train has left the station.”
Thibeault added that there is “much work” to do to connect the UHD Forum’s activities to the larger SVTA mission of solving the technical challenges of securely streaming high-quality video at scale.
“Interoperability has long plagued our industry and is something that we, at the SVTA, are also seeking to improve. With the UHD Forum guidelines now part of the SVTA, we can leverage the larger SVTA member pool to bring more technical expertise and insight to solving new technical challenges of content quality and production,” Thibeault continued. “We see the UHDF collaborating with other Working Groups in an effort to improve that interoperability and reduce the siloing which has been hurting our industry the past decades.”
