RIST Forum appoints new directors to drive interoperability

Reliable Internet Stream Transport (RIST), which champions interoperability for the broadcast market, has announced the appointment of new directors to drive this vision for 2020.

The RIST Forum promotes an interoperable standard for transporting live video over unmanaged IP networks, it was jointly developed by a group of experts using a standards-based approach.

Following on from its AGM in Los Angeles last month, the RIST Forum has confirmed the group’s new directors; Media Transport Solutions president Paul Atwell, Open Broadcast Systems chief executive Kieran Kunhya, VideoFlow co-founder Adi Rozenberg and Zixi senior vice president alliances and marketing John Wastcoat.

Its members will continue to facilitate the Forum’s key objective which aims to foster the global adoption of interoperable RIST protocol.

This is led by RIST Forum president, Ciro Noronha, executive vice president of engineering at Cobalt Digital, while, Jacob Kinsey, senior associate director, at Cobalt Digital, will maintain the position of Treasurer.

The purpose of the meeting was to review 2019 practices and strategy as well as discuss the Forum’s plans for 2020 and vote on the current positions.

It was confirmed Arielle Slama, senior product marketing manager at Net Insight, and Suzana Brady, vice president of sales at Cobalt Digital, will both remain as co-chairs.

• Read more: Low latency internet streaming standard backed by vendors

RIST Forum president Ciro Noronha said: “RIST specs are detailed enough to ensure that two different implementations will be interoperable.

“Our focus for 2020 is to demonstrate this ground-breaking multi-vendor approach wherever we can. Hosting RIST plug-fests and demos where vendors can experience and verify the interoperability for themselves, whilst getting a sense of the potential for user innovation – the best of both worlds.”

RIST is designed to transport all video over the Internet but is mainly used for news and sports contribution, remote production, affiliate distribution and primary distribution.

With RIST, interoperability is achieved through a framework of clear specifications, leaving vendors a level of flexibility to innovate within their own implementations.

• Read more: SMPTE makes interoperability strides with IMF