All things related to multicast

["Fulchiero, Frank (Information Services)" <>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Frank Fulchiero 
[mailto:]

I said:
"Right, the middleware and devices are proprietary, which brings me  
back to my point that it would be nice to have an open standard, open  
source announce/discovery/playback system to support the needs of  
R&E. Commercial interests seem to be doing fine developing their own  
solutions, but beyond agreeing on codecs don't seem to be too  
interested in developing open-standard free-to-use ones."

Sorry, I have plead ignorance in this area, and it shows.
I just noticed the Open IPTV Forum
http://www.openiptvforum.org/aboutus.html
It was created "to provide an IPTV solution enabling a "plug and play" 
experience for the end-users and filling a industry gap making it independent 
from the technology behind it.

...the different players in the IPTV value chain needed to have a "tool" to 
easily develop their own products to fit into the "plug and play" solution. 
The "tool" is the open standards that are created in this Open IPTV Forum"

I notice the Architecture PDF also addresses multicast standards, have not 
had a chance to study it. Not sure this would include software-based clients, 
or be usable to the needs of the R&E community.

Frank