MPEG Industry Forum

Session 1: The New Video Distribution Model

David Price, Harmonic, Inc. (Moderator)

David Price is currently Vice President, Business Development at Harmonic Inc., based in Sunnyvale, California where he is responsible for pioneering Harmonic's leading position in digital video broadcast, distribution and IP based delivery technologies.
David was previously Vice-President with TV/COM International, in San Diego (formerly Oak Communications), where he was responsible for the Sales Account and Operations management functions. TV/COM produced the world's first MPEG-2 DVB video encoding systems. Originally from the UK, David came to the US as Vice President of M/A-COM Linkabit, now Hughes Network Systems.

David has over 19 years experience in the telecommunication industry during which he has successfully carried out executive management responsibilities in sales, engineering and operations and general management functions for satellite and terrestrial based communications technology providers. David has written many articles for trade publications and journals around the world and has also appeared on a number of business television and radio programs in the US, Europe and the Middle East.

David has lectured at UCSD and is a frequent guest speaker at many of the worlds leading symposiums on advance communications technology. Originally, an electronics engineer on the design team of the worlds first CAT scan system, he graduated from CIT with a Fellowship MBA and has an Honors Bachelors degree in Cybernetics, Instrument Physics and Mathematics.

Tim Schaaff, Apple Computer

Mr. Schaaff is the Vice-President of Engineering for Apple’s Interactive Media Group and is responsible for Apple's graphics, video, audio, and imaging software technologies. His team is also responsible for QuickTime, Apple's popular multimedia creation and publishing software.

With it's industry-leading support for open media standards such as DVD, MPEG-2, MP3, and Firewire, Apple has made a strong commitment to supporting a standards-based technical strategy. As a founder of the ISMA and contributor of the file format for MPEG-4, Apple has made a strong commitment to MPEG-4. Apple is currently developing an MPEG-4 QuickTime media player and will work with the community to catalyze the adoption of MPEG technology throughout the industry.

Tim Schaaff joined Apple in 1991 and has held numerous engineering and engineering management positions within the company. Mr. Schaaff received his undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College (Hanover, NH) in 1982.

Amir Majidimehr, Microsoft

Peter Gutman, Video Networks

Peter is responsible for finance, planning and corporate development. He has over 18 years experience in finance, private equity and management consulting.
Peter was previously a Managing Director with iFormation Group, a private equity firm formed as a joint venture between Goldman Sachs, General Atlantic Partners and BCG. Before that, Peter was a Managing Director in Goldman Sachs', Communications, Media and Technology Group where he advised on a range of transactions and worked on a variety of investments within these sectors.

Prior to joining Goldman, Peter worked at Lehman Brothers, Booz Allen & Hamilton and Arthur Andersen & Co. He has an MBA from the University of Chicago, a MSc. in Economics from the London School of Economics and an Engineering degree from the University of Michigan.

Rhys Lewis, BBC

Rhys Lewis leads a small team responsible for developing the BBC's over-arching technical strategy and architecture.

Rhys has spent most of his working life researching and developing new broadcast technologies. During that time he has been closely involved with the launch of many of the BBC's digital broadcasting services including; the Radio Data System on FM Radio, NICAM sound for Television and Digital Radio (DAB). During the start-up phase of Digital Television, Rhys led the technical team at the BBC's Research & Development Department who led the specification, design and implementation of the technical systems used by the BBC to deliver its services to UK digital satellite, digital terrestrial and digital cable viewers.

Over the years, Rhys has also been closely involved with the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and was the leader of the technical team advising the EBU on converting the Eurovision network from analogue to digital operation. He is currently the chair of the EBU's Network Technology Management Committee.

Session 2: The Challenge of Interoperability

Rich Mavrogeanes, VBrick Systems (Moderator)

Rich Mavrogeanes has been in the communications industry for more than 30 years. Prior to founding VBrick in 1997, he was a founding executive at several other successful technology companies. His background includes senior technical, marketing and management positions at Avidia, Switched Network Technologies, Dataproducts Corporation and General DataCom. He received the "Innovator Of The Year" award, was named one of 17 industry executives to Federal Computer Week's "Federal 100" list for making a difference in Federal Information Technology, was named a "A List" executive by Telecom Magazine, received the Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur Of The Year Finalist Award, and accepted ComputerWorld's Hero's Award. He also serves on the board of directors of the Connecticut Technology Council and the Internet Streaming Media Alliance. Most recently, he was named one of the top most influential people in the streaming media industry by Streaming Magazine, and he has authored many articles on the subject of Streaming Media which have appeared in the top industry journals.

Ralph Neff, MPEGIF/Packet Video

Boris Felts, ISMA/Envivio

Boris Felts, Director of Product Development at Envivio, is the former Chairman of the Interoperability and Conformance Group in ISMA and an active member of the Logo Committee in MPEGIF. The Interoperability and Conformance Group is in charge of defining the conformance to ISMA specification, organizing interoperability and certification events. Lately, this group has been focusing on the creation of a set of tools and procedures for the Certification Program in ISMA. Mr. Felts has organized and run the first trials of the Certification Program.
Within MPEGIF, he has also contributed to numerous interoperability events and is member of the Logo Committee to give some expertise on MPEG-4 Systems. Prior to Envivio, Mr. Felts was researcher in the Philips Laboratories in Paris, working on Wavelet-based video compression and context-adaptive arithmetic coding. He graduated from "Ecole Polytechnique" in France and focused on telecom engineering earning another degree from "Telecom Paris".

Keynote Address - New Standards of Excellence in Video

Alty van Luijt, Philips

Born in Eindhoven 1951, graduated from Eindhoven University in 1977 in electronics. Worked for Philips in various Consumer Electronics and Business Electronics roles, ranging from Remote control, viewdata, video games and CD-i From 1994 involved with Digital Broadcast and part of the management team of Philips DVS (Digital Video Systems), which later became DN (Digital Networks) From 2000 onward active in a Business Development role in Philips Corporate Research and now in Corporate technologies Philips representative in the DVB Steering Board Happily married, two daughters

Session 3: MPEG-4 AVC Availibility

Sebastian Moeritz, dicas GmbH (Moderator)

Sebastian is an entrepreneur with an extensive business experience in a number of international markets. After studies in social sciences and economics, he has previously been specialising in property and investment.

Since 1996 he has been involved in a number of information technology related ventures and joined dicas, a developer of real-time video coding solutions, based in Germany, as its CEO in the beginning of 2001. dicas is an MPEG-focused video coding specialist and a leading developer of MPEG-4 AVC/H.264, MPEG-4 and 3GPP compliant real-time video coding solutions providing the industry with the highest quality core technology for digital video.

Sebastian is the President of the MPEG Industry Forum (MPEGIF) since 2004 and has been on MPEGIF's Board of Directors since 2002 serving as Treasurer. Sebastian is a regular speaker at industry events as well as the author of various articles and opinions in broadcast and multimedia publications. He is also the co-author of the book "Understanding MPEG-4 - Technology and Business Insights" (with Prof. Dr. Klaus Diepold of the Technical University of Munich, Germany).

He is listed in "Cable and Satellite Europe's Euro 50 for 2004", which features the leaders in Broadband and Pay-TV across Europe, Middle East and Africa.

David Singer, Apple Computer

David Price, Harmonic (Moderator)

David Price is currently Vice President, Business Development at Harmonic Inc., based in Sunnyvale, California where he is responsible for pioneering Harmonic's leading position in digital video broadcast, distribution and IP based delivery technologies.
David was previously Vice-President with TV/COM International, in San Diego (formerly Oak Communications), where he was responsible for the Sales Account and Operations management functions. TV/COM produced the world's first MPEG-2 DVB video encoding systems. Originally from the UK, David came to the US as Vice President of M/A-COM Linkabit, now Hughes Network Systems.

David has over 19 years experience in the telecommunication industry during which he has successfully carried out executive management responsibilities in sales, engineering and operations and general management functions for satellite and terrestrial based communications technology providers. David has written many articles for trade publications and journals around the world and has also appeared on a number of business television and radio programs in the US, Europe and the Middle East.

David has lectured at UCSD and is a frequent guest speaker at many of the worlds leading symposiums on advance communications technology. Originally, an electronics engineer on the design team of the worlds first CAT scan system, he graduated from CIT with a Fellowship MBA and has an Honors Bachelors degree in Cybernetics, Instrument Physics and Mathematics.

Tim Sheppard, TandbergTV

Dean Skandalis, MPEG-LA

Helene Jay, Via Licensing

Hélène Jay, coordinates Via Licensing's European office as Via's Director of Business Development for Europe. Hélène is a French attorney who spent five years in Montréal, Canada as vice president licensing of the patent pool administrator SiproLab- VoiceAge. Formerly, the legal adviser with the European Standardization Body, ETSI, Hélène is well acquainted with both standards-setting processes and patent pool licensing activities. This background equips her to be an effective liaison with all of the constituencies that look to Via Licensing for service.

Jon O'Donnell, Equator

Session 4: Emerging MPEG Technologies & Integration Specifications

Robert Bleidt, StreamCrest (Moderator)

Robert Bleidt is President of Streamcrest Associates, a product and business strategy consulting firm in new media technologies. Previously, he was Director of Product Management and Business Strategy for the MPEG-4 business of Philips Digital Networks and managed the development of Philips Emmy-winning asset management system for television broadcasting.

Prior to joining Philips, Mr. Bleidt served as Director of Marketing and New Business Development for Sarnoff Real Time Corporation, a video-on-demand venture of Sarnoff Labs. Previously, he was Director of Mass Storage Technology and inventor of SRTC's Carousel algorithm. Before joining Sarnoff, Mr. Bleidt was President of Image Circuits, a consulting engineering firm and manufacturer of HDTV research equipment, and Senior Staff Engineer with Fortel, a manufacturer of signal processing equipment for the broadcast television industry.

Mr. Bleidt holds BEE, MSEE, and MBA degrees and is a Registered Professional Engineer.

Rajan Samtani, ContentGuard

Stefan Geyersberger, Fraunhofer

Stefan Geyersberger joined Fraunhofer IIS in 1996 and was Group Manager for DSP Implementations from 1998 to 2000 in the Studio Department. Since 2000 he is Director of Business Development, Software and IP Licensing for the Audio & Multimedia departments at Fraunhofer IIS. In his current position Stefan is engaged in new technology and business initiatives such as MPEG-4 Audio, Electronic Media Distribution, DVD formats, and Digital Radio Mondiale.

Before he joined Fraunhofer IIS he developed the SCHOEPS Spherical Microphone KFM-6 which is the reference for binaural live recordings.

Stefan Geyersberger is an AES member and contributes to projects of DVD Forum, DVB, AVS China and ISMA. He holds a degree in both Music Studies and Electrical Engineering.

Stefan Meltzer, Coding Technologies

Session 5: Video to the Handheld Device

Jon Folland, Nativ

Jon has been involved in the broadband and broadcast industries and their associated technologies for the past eight years and has played major roles in implementing leading edge solutions over this period. He has a strong background in strategic and technical planning and project management and through Nativ has worked with companies such as Turner Broadcasting, MTV, Channel4, BBC and Teletext.

Prior to this, Jon was Technical Team Leader at Razorfish, UK where he was responsible for managing the design, build and deployment of large-scale technical solutions for blue chip clients.

Jon's main interests revolve around systems integration and time-based media distribution using MPEG-2 and MPEG-4.

Jon has a degree in Chemistry from the University of Bristol.

Marty Pico, Harmonic, Inc.

Marty Picco, Sr. Director, Systems Engineering, Harmonic, has been at the forefront of shaping Harmonic's leading position in digital video broadcast, distribution and IP-based delivery technologies. Prior to Harmonic, Marty was President of Cogent Technology, one of the earliest developers of MPEG-2 splicing and rate shaping, which was acquired by Harmonic in 2000. Marty has driven the development of groundbreaking products in computer graphics and digital video for over 20 years. Marty holds B.S. and M.E. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University and has attended Stanford's Executive Institute, a "mini-MBA" program for senior executives in high tech.

Sebastian Moeritz

Sebastian Moeritz joined dicas, a developer of ISO MPEG-4 real-time video coding solutions, based in Germany, as its CEO in the beginning of 2001.

dicas provides the industry with the highest quality core technology for digital video supporting the most common profiles of MPEG-4 video and is the first company to have introduced an MPEG-4 SDK with object-based features in the market.

Sebastian is an entrepreneur with an extensive business experience in a number of international markets. After studies in social sciences and economics, he has previously been specialising in property and investment. Since 1996 he has been involved in a number of information technology related ventures and has been an active participant in the MPEG Industry Forum since dicas joined in January 2002.

In addition to serving as Treasurer, his work at MPEGIF is focused on business-related aspects of MPEG-4 and on promoting these.

Mike Short, O2

Mike's career spans 30 years in Electronics (Philips and L+G) and Telecommunications (BT, Cellnet and O2), with the last 18 years in Mobile Communications. He was appointed Contracts Director of Cellnet (now O2) in 1989, dealing with infrastructure investments and UK interconnect agreements. In 1993 the focus moved to establishing Cellnet's GSM service and international roaming agreements.

He was elected Chairman of the global GSM Association for 1995/96, and served on its Executive Board for 3 years, was the 1st Chairman of GSM Europe in 1996 and the GSM Association Data Task Force 1999/2001. He was elected to the WAP Forum Board 2000/2 and was a founder Board Member of Open Mobile Alliance (OMA). He was also elected Chairman UK Mobile Data Association in 1998 (renewed for 2004/6).

Mike has served as Vice President UK FEI 1998/2001, and led FEI (now Intellect) mobile / environmental committees. He has also been a member of Government Advisory Groups on Spectrum (SMAG and OFCOM OSAB), Internet (Home Office Internet Task Force) and Security (Home Office TAB) since 1998, and was appointed a Visiting Professor at Surrey University in October 2003.

After running Cellnet's 3G business case development (1996-2000), Mike was appointed O2 Vice President - Technology in July 2000. In 2002 his focus moved to EU regulation, including the opening of an O2 Brussels office, and the technical aspects of public policy. Mike's focus today is on 3G cellular Mobile Innovation and Data services, and steering O2 Group Research and Development in Mobile.