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Netflix, YouTube shun VoD alliance

More than a dozen media companies have formed an alliance that aims to improve standards and best practice in internet video, but industry giants Netflix, Amazon and YouTube aren’t involved.

The Streaming Video Alliance (SVA) is made up of 17 companies including Fox Networks Group, Comcast and Yahoo and will meet at least twice a year and set up working groups.

The organisation will focus on three initial areas: open architecture, to define specifications for network and cloud-based streaming and caching infrastructure; quality of experience, to create a common approach to defining, measuring, optimising and reporting quality of the video streaming; and interoperability, to create standards for streaming video.

However, Netflix, Amazon and YouTube, which account for more than half of downloads and video streams in the US between them, have not signed up to the partnership.

A Netflix spokesman said: “We aren’t planning to join. Given the scale of Netflix video traffic, we custom-built our ‘Open Connect’ network to ensure Netflix members have the best viewing experience and we provide it free to internet service providers.”

Dan Rayburn, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan and a blogger in the streaming video space, is informally spearheading the group’s efforts.

He said the SVA does not want to deal with policy or political issues like the latest battle over President Obama’s proposed net neutrality rules for broadband service on the internet.

The founding SVA members are: Alcatel-Lucent, Charter Communications, Cisco Systems, Comcast, Epix, Fox Networks Group, Korea Telecom, Level 3 Communications, Liberty Global, Limelight Networks, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Qwilt, Telecom Italia, Telstra, Ustream, Wowza Media Systems and Yahoo.

The SVA is not to be confused with the now disbanded Internet Streaming Media Alliance, which was formed at the end of 2000 by firms including Apple, Cisco, Kasenna and Philips.

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