MPEG DASH video streaming technology co-developed in Klagenfurt wins Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award

The Emmy® Awards do not only honour the work of actors and directors, but they also recognise technologies that are steadily improving the viewing experience for consumers. This year, the winners include the MPEG DASH Standard. Christian Timmerer (Department of Information Technology) played a leading role in its development.

To ensure that moving images can be played back on the widest possible range of devices as quickly and in the best quality possible, researchers all over the world have conducted extensive research over the past decades. One major landmark was the initial release of the MPEG DASH standard in 2012. For the first time, this specified how videos can be transmitted via HTTP in such a way that their quality is optimised for the respective internet speed and the respective end devices such as TV sets or smartphones. Both then and now, the research group led by Christian Timmerer at the Department of Information Technology at the University of Klagenfurt made substantial contributions.

Today, the MPEG DASH standard is the only commercially used international standard technology for media streaming over HTTP and is used by many streaming portals such as YouTube or the ORF TVThek. “MPEG DASH radically changed the streaming industry by creating a standard that has since been adopted by all relevant consortia. The key to its success was its technical sophistication, the fact that it was developed with a high degree of industry collaboration and that it addressed the many requirements of the market”, Christian Timmerer explains.

Ten years after the initial launch of the standard, which has since been refined on numerous occasions, the development consortium is set to receive the coveted television award in Las Vegas at the end of April.