[xiph-rtp] Fluendo funds Xiph.org for Vorbis and Theora RTP specifications

[Christian Fredrik Kalager Schaller]

Fluendo funds Xiph.org for Vorbis and Theora RTP specifications

GNU/Linux multimedia specialist Fluendo announces funding of Xiph.org to
complete RTP specifications for the Vorbis and Theora codec formats

December 6, 2004 - Barcelona, Spain
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Fluendo is taking another step towards being able to offer the world
high-quality streaming using standard royalty-free formats. By giving
content producers and software makers the opportunity to use the popular
Vorbis and Theora formats together with the IETF-standardized Real Time
Protocol, reach and use of these formats will be increased even further.

"It's fantastic to see Fluendo continuing to fill in pieces of media
technology still missing in the Open Source world. By implementing
Xiph's Ogg codecs over RTP, Fluendo is not only enhancing their own
business, they're giving, truly giving, powerful media technologies to
all the peoples of the world." says Christopher Montgomery, Executive
Director of the Xiph.org Foundation.

"RTP support has been missing from our technology suite for a long time,
and we're very happy to have Fluendo's support in remedy," said Ralph
Giles, lead Theora developer for the Xiph.org Foundation. "RTP is
becoming increasingly important for desktop conferencing and we are
especially excited by the prospect of consumer multicast distribution. "

"We are very happy to collaborate with the Xiph.org Foundation on
enabling the high-quality Vorbis and Theora codecs for use with the
standardized RTP protocol", Fluendo Business Manager Christian Schaller
says. "Looking forward, we feel that combining our own streaming server
Flumotion with RTP-enabled Vorbis and Theora will be an unbeatable
combination for a very wide range of streaming audio and video content
providers."

Phil Kerr of Xiph.org will be in charge of the development of the
specifications, including the creation of reference implementations and
working with the Internet Engineering Task Force and other stakeholders.
The development will be conducted in an open fashion in the long-
standing tradition of the Open Source community.

"With the support of Fluendo, the Xiph.Org Foundation is able to provide
a complete set of streaming technologies to the wider Internet
community" says Phil Kerr. "The RTP profiles for Vorbis audio and Theora
video allow for real-time streaming of high-quality, multi-channel,
audio and video."

Vorbis and Theora

The Vorbis and Theora are open and royalty-free multimedia formats for
audio and video. Both of them are growing in popularity quickly. More
and more portable music players from leading producers such as iRiver
and iAudio have had support added for the Ogg/Vorbis format. It is being
used in popular games such as Unreal Tournament, Doom 3 and Harry Potter
2. It is also experiencing growing popularity for web radio with
adopters such as UK Virgin Radio and Canadian CBC.

Since the recent release of Theora's finalized format specification, it
too is being implemented by more and more products, among which is
Fluendo's own Flumotion Streaming Server.

Fluendo S.L.

Fluendo is a company specialized in delivering products and consulting
services focusing on UNIX and GNU/Linux multimedia. Fluendo employs
several of the central developers of the GStreamer multimedia framework,
which is quickly establishing itself as the de-facto standard multimedia
framework for GNU/Linux and UNIX systems. Fluendo's flagship product is
the streaming media server, Flumotion, blessed with a unique and
powerful distributed design. Fluendo comes out ahead by combining best-
of-breed systems from the Open Source world with a strong team of highly
knowledgeable software engineers and a management team with a lot of
streaming media expertise.

Xiph.org Foundation

The Xiph.org Foundation is a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to the
production of technically competitive, freely-implementable multimedia
technology without the intellectual property encumbrances that tax
distribution in other formats. Xiph believes in leveling the playing
field for digital content so that all producers and artists can
distribute their work for minimal cost, regardless of industrial
affiliation.

For more information

For more information on Fluendo, visit the website at
   http://www.fluendo.com/ or mail info at fluendo.com

For more information on the Xiph.org Foundation: http://www.xiph.org/

References

   1. http://www.fluendo.com/
   2. Mail to: info at fluendo.com
   3. http://www.xiph.org/