Sony Position Paper for the W3C Video on the Web Workshop

Scott Smyers
Network and Systems Architecture Division
Sony Electronics Inc.

Sony is very active in standardization areas that are complimentary to the Video on the Web space. Most specifically, Sony holds leadership roles and is very active at the technical levels of the Digital Living Network Alliance, the Coral Consortium, the Marlin Developer Community and other related areas. From this list it should be clear that Sonys major standardization focus is on consumer electronics devices that connect to a consumers home network. Utilizing consumer home networks for the distribution of audio and video streams, including HD content streams and commercial content, is of utmost importance to Sony, and in addition to standards work, Sony has demonstrated its interest and intentions with actual consumer products that implement these standards.

Focusing on the workshop topic, while it is clear from Sonys investment in DLNA, which defines a platform of interoperability based on open and established internet standards, including HTTP and RTP for streaming, all layers below and a format interoperability and link protection layers above, what might not be as clear is Sonys goal to enable an increasing offering of video content of all types to the devices connected in a consumers home network. Internet streaming content is very much on that list.

With that as Sonys stated position, I offer a partial list of questions related to the upcoming workshop:

  1. Beyond what is already available for streaming content on the Internet, what additional technologies does W3C want to standardize in this space?
  2. What is the relationship between this work and existing standards?
  3. What are the plans for coordinating this work with the efforts of other standards organizations working in related or effected areas?