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VR Industry Forum to Host Master Class and Interoperability Demonstrations at NAB 2018

FREMONT, Calif., April 3, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- The Virtual Reality Industry Forum (VRIF) today announced it will be hosting a 2-hour Master Class at NAB 2018 in Las Vegas on Sunday, April 8. The Master Class features experts from Ericsson, Intel, and Sky. Speakers will discuss the state of VR services and provide a concise overview of VRIF's Guidelines published this spring. These Guidelines focus on the delivery ecosystem of 360° video and document interoperability, best production practices including human factors, and security considerations for VR streaming.

VRIF member companies will highlight interoperability between VR360 implementations based on the VRIF Guidelines, with demonstrations at a VRIF Exhibit at the NAB Futures Park in North Hall, booth N2034FP. Imeve will demonstrate production-ready 6K live video streamed from the Z CAM S1 camera using streaming manifests to signal the format of a live VR360 stream, based on VRIF's Guidelines. Nokia, as part of its research and support for industry standards, will demonstrate a playback system for viewport-dependent video streaming as documented in VRIF's Guidelines, with content created by Fraunhofer HHI.  Saving bandwidth, such viewport-dependent streaming transmits the user's viewport in the highest quality while sending the invisible parts of the VR scene in lower resolution.

After publishing its Guidelines earlier this year, VRIF now focuses on making tools available for testing interoperability, including content and software. VRIF is planning enhancements to its Guidelines, addressing live VR360 services and how to deal with high dynamic range (HDR) in VR content.

"One of the big challenges facing VR 360, both on-demand and live, is the need for interoperable solutions that support requirements such as higher resolutions, viewport-adaptive streaming, and stereoscopic vision. No one company can solve these issues on their own, and VRIF is playing a very important role to help multiple players across the industry to come together and deliver solutions to meet customer needs," said Devon Copley, Co-founder and CEO of Imeve, a recent addition to the VRIF membership.

"At this year's NAB Master Class, we will discuss the current state of VR deployments, what we can learn from recent events such as the Olympic Games, and how the industry can best move forward through collaboration and standardized approaches," said Rob Koenen, President of the Virtual Reality Industry Forum. "We are particularly excited to have member companies showing actual implementations of our Guidelines in the Futures Park."

The VRIF Master Class will be held on April 8 from 10:00am - noon at the Las Vegas Convention Center, room N239/N241. For more information or to register to attend this free event, visit https://www.vr-if.org/events/vrif-at-nab-2018/. VRIF is also a media partner for Light Reading's NAB breakfast event on Monday, April 9, "The Reality of VR Video." Rob Koenen, VRIF President, will participate in the panel discussion.

About VRIF
Launched at CES 2017 to further the widespread availability of high quality audiovisual VR experiences for the benefit of consumers, VRIF today includes 40 member organizations, representing a broad range of participants from sectors including, but not limited to, the movie, television, mobile, broadcast and interactive gaming ecosystems, comprising content creators, content distributors, consumer electronics manufacturers, professional equipment manufacturers and technology companies. Membership in VRIF is open to all parties that support its mission. VRIF relies on Standards Development Organizations (SDOs) to develop relevant standards, and frequently liaises with such SDOs.

Charter members of VRIF include: CableLabs, Dolby, DTS, EBU, Ericsson, Fraunhofer, Huawei Technologies, Intel, Nokia Technologies, Qualcomm, Sky and TNO. Contributor level company members include: Akamai, ARRIS, b<>com, Harmonic, Inside Secure, Irdeto, MediaTek, Monotype, Sony Pictures, Thomson licensing SAS (Technicolor), Verizon and Viaccess-Orca.

For more information, visit http://www.vr-if.org.

Media Contact
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SOURCE VR Industry Forum