Geneva, Switzerland, 2 May 2012

Address

Ladies and Gentlemen
Good evening

I would like to thank MPEG Chairman Leonardo Chiariglione for inviting me to this Celebration of the 100th MPEG meeting! I am very pleased to be here to congratulate you all on your tremendous achievements and especially Leonardo who has led MPEG for all its 25 years of successful work. Quite a unique achievement.

The MPEG name is synonymous with quality and is one of those rare examples of a standards abbreviation entering into the public lexicon.

MPEG standards have enabled interoperability of billions of devices… set top boxes, MP3 players, video cameras, telephones, computers, tablets, DVD players… the list is endless. I am proud that a substantial part of this work has been done in collaboration with ITU.

Perhaps the most notable success of course is the MPEG video coding standards.

ITU’s collaboration with MPEG started in the early 1990's with MPEG2 known as H.222 and H.262 in ITU.

Later, the Joint Video Team of ITU-T Study Group 16 and MPEG (JTC1 SC29 WP2) produced the award winning standard MPEG4 Part 10 AVC known in ITU as ITU-T H.264 which is widely used in high-definition TV, IPTV, Blu-Ray, YouTube, the iPhone etc.

This is the jewel in the crown of international standards collaboration. This standard has been recognized and applauded across an amazing spectrum of the industry. A highlight for me was to join colleagues from the JVT to represent ITU, ISO and IEC at the Primetime Emmy awards in Hollywood in August 2008 to receive this beautiful award on behalf of the three organisations.

This achievement is due to a group of dedicated people working in MPEG and illustrates the power of international collaboration on standards.

Collaboration between the various standards bodies in MPEG is a model many others should follow.

Building upon the success of H.264 | MPEG4 Part 10 AVC, I was very pleased that another joint collaborative team on video coding was established between ITU Study Group 16 and MPEG, the JCT-VC. We are looking forward to the team completing the first version of the next generation of video coding standard, High Efficiency Video Coding, HEVC, in early 2013.

We are very pleased to see the high level of industry and academic participation in the JCT-VC. In November ITU was pleased to host a meeting with more than a 1000 contributions and about 300 participants. This time, I understand there are a similar number of participants and documents.

In ITU looks we forward to continuing this successful partnership in the near future by working in the JCT-VC for HEVC extensions for scalability and 3D, as well as to jointly developing 3D extensions to the very successful [H.264 | MPEG4 Part 10] AVC standard.

Perhaps we are on the way to an Oscar!

Ladies and gentlemen I wish you an enjoyable evening in celebration of this historic event.