With heavyweights Nokia, Openwave, Sony, HP, Intel, Symbian, PalmSource and several others behind it, could RealNetworks' new Helix Community herald a new age for streaming?
RealNetworks has formed the Helix Community with support from companies such as HP, Intel, Nokia, Oracle, PalmSource, Sony and Sun Microsystems. Helix was started as a platform and community to enable the creation of digital media products and applications for any format, operating system or device.
The Helix Community aims to enable companies, institutions and individual developers to access the Helix Platform source code in order to both enhance the Helix Platform and to build Helix-powered encoder, server and client products.
The Helix platform is set to support any media technology that a developer manages to integrate into the platform. RealNetworks developers already seem to have reverse engineered the Windows Media format to some degree, allowing content in Windows Media format to be streamed over Helix without knowing much about the underlying encoding mechanism.
Microsoft, which is responsible for the Windows Media format, is also a company notably missing from the initiative. This is unlikely to be a surprise to many, since the company is hard at work to make its Windows Media format the de facto standard for media deliveries on the Internet, and is likely to be the largest sole competitor to the Helix platform.
A full list of members participating in the Helix Community includes BSquare, CollabNet, Cisco, Hitachi, HP, Intel, Lindows, nCUBE, NEC, Network Appliance, Nokia, Openwave, Opera, Oracle, PalmSource, Phoenix Technologies, Pinnacle Systems, Red Hat, Sony, Speedera, Sprint, ST Microsystems, Sun, Symbian, Tao Group, Texas Instruments, TiVO, Volera and the Xiph.org Foundation.
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