Pre-standardization of digital multimedia systems

Standardization is essential for successful development of the market for multimedia systems and applications. Due to the novelty of the technologies involved and the fact that the market is as yet very small, but growing fast, the general consensus in industry is that standardization via the formal procedures employed by the existing standards organizations would take too long. The new market opportunities, created by digital audio, video and multimedia systems and applications, have made it possible to organize specification projects in a phase preceding formal standardization. In these specification projects many industry players are taking part with some of their best engineers and managers as delegates. Two clearly visible examples of these projects are the Digital Video Broadcasting project in Europe and the Digital Audio-Visual Council with a global approach. In this article a short description of the projects, the goals and the methods is given.