AV and IT giants strike technology alliance

Leading AV, consumer electronics and silicon companies have joined forces to launch the AVnu Alliance, a new lobby group which will work to promote emerging IEEE 802.1 Audio/Video Bridging (AVB) networking standards for industries including professional AV, automotive, and consumer electronics.

The founding members of the AVnu Alliance include Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Harman International, Intel, Samsung Electronics and Xilinx. In addition to the Founders, Avid Technology, Marvell and Meyer Sound Laboratories have joined the AVnu Alliance as first promoters.

AVnu Alliance aims to establish a professional quality A/V experience in networked environments.

The draft AVB standards are designed to work over widely-used IEEE 802 layer 2 networks. These new standards provide networking features for tightly controlled media stream synchronisation, buffering and reservation.

The organisation claims the use of AVB enables higher layer protocols and applications to realise professional-quality A/V even if there are various lower-layer network links in the path between endpoint devices. AVnu expects to see initial deployment of AVB on Ethernet networks and anticipates other home networking standards will follow.

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“The AVB technology developed by the IEEE has reached a level of maturity that permits its use in the creation of innovative new products,” said Rick Kreifeldt, AVnu Alliance chairman and president.

“Our mission is to drive these cutting-edge technologies into the professional A/V, automotive, and consumer electronics markets, enhancing the quality of experience across a broad range of products and applications.”

“A/V networks are becoming burdened by greater complexity and the ever-increasing demands of streaming content, yet there are few options to ensure reliability in a heterogeneous network based upon open industry standards,” said Jonathan Gaw, research manager at IT market research and advisory firm IDC.

“Broad, cross-industry efforts are crucial to ensure that the quality-of-experience is addressed early in the product development cycle, and to promote the interoperability of products being deployed in professional A/V, automotive and home networking scenarios."