Accelerating the media business with MPEG extensible middleware

The development of successful multimedia applications is becoming a challenging task due to short deployment cycles and the huge amount of applications flooding the market. One major problem that the multimedia industry is facing in this area is the heterogeneity of the content-delivery chain. ISO/IEC MPEG has recognized this fact with the development of an MPEG Extensible Middleware (MXM), which specifically addresses this issue. A key issue when defining a platform is the portability to other platforms, a concept that calls for middleware to be used in a platform independent way. Finally, an infinite number of innovative business models based on media technologies, including those based on MPEG, could be developed at reduced costs by using a normative API. The Digital Item adaptation engine specifies the means to access and create information pertaining to the usage environment context, such as screen resolution and supported coding formats.