HTTP Live Streaming Spec at IETF

There are some raised eyebrows today regarding Apple’s claim that their live streaming for today’s event is “based on open standards”, but only available for Mac OS X 10.6 and iOS users. It’s a damn shame that Windows users can’t watch it, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t an open standard. Maybe “proposed open standard” would be more apt, though.

Lots of speculation from readers via email, by the way, that the live streaming of the event is going to be part of the event itself — that Apple is going to announce high-fidelity live video streaming as a major new feature for Apple TV, Macs, and iOS devices.

Update: Email from a self-described “IETF weenie”:

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live-streaming-04 is not a proposed open standard. At the top of the document, it says “Intended status: Informational”. That means that the IETF will have no control over the content; only the authors do. This is actually a pretty important distinction.

★ Wednesday, 1 September 2010