News Future Applications and Media

Video streaming has become an integral part of our daily media consumption and accounts for the majority (60 to 70 percent) of global internet traffic. The white paper provides guidelines to help decision makers, developers and consumers identify the complex and diverse relationships between streaming components and environmental impact, and promote sustainable solutions.

The “Corporate Star Awards” were presented at IBC 2024. The “Ecoflow” project won in the category “Best Carbon Footprint Improvement Initiative”. Fraunhofer FOKUS contributed its experience from the “Green Streaming” project to the initiative. In this project, scientists are researching technologies and solutions for energy-efficient and sustainable video streaming.

The 11th FOKUS Media Web Symposium (MWS), held in Berlin from June 11 to 12, was the meeting place for anyone interested in media technologies and applications. 230 participants from 21 countries participated in the conference, workshops, and tutorials.

Since March 10, 2024, the Future Applications and Media (FAME) business unit of Fraunhofer FOKUS is a member of the 5G-MAG Media Action Group. The 5G-MAG members are working on 5G-based technologies and advanced media applications.

The increased use of media on the internet is leading to rising energy consumption. The “Green Streaming - Technologies for a sustainable digital media value-chain” project aims to create energy-efficient solutions for the entire video streaming value-chain: from video creation, processing and delivery through to use on various end devices. The project is a part of the “GreenTech Innovation Competition” technology program of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection.

The Consumer Technology Association (CTA) has honoured FOKUS researchers with the CTA Technology Achievement Award for their outstanding contributions to the CTA WAVE Streaming Media Test Suite.

The German DVB-I pilot project won the “IBC 2023 Special Award for Innovation” at the International Broadcasting Convention (IBC). In the project, the DVB-I standard is being further developed to facilitate the continuous use of linear TV programs. Fraunhofer FOKUS provides a DVB-I client for Android TV and offers it to other project participants for testing and evaluation purposes.

Fraunhofer FOKUS has been organizing the FOKUS Media Web Symposium (MWS) since 2010. For its tenth anniversary, over 200 participants from 21 countries met in Berlin on the 13th and 14th of June, 2023. With its tutorials and workshop, the MWS once again offered the opportunity for deeper insights into Internet-based media.

Counterfeits of high-quality products such as medicines, cosmetics, watches, or food and beverages circulate in large numbers, especially in online retail. Consumers barely have a chance to verify the authenticity of a product. In the SmartID project, scientists at Fraunhofer are now developing a counterfeit-proof barcode system for authenticity verification simply by using a smartphone without accessing a database. The team is presenting a SmartID demonstrator for the first time at the Interpack 2023 trade fair for packaging in Düsseldorf.

The SVT4GS23 workshop will be hosted and organized as part of the 48th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN) 2023. As part of a call for papers, contributions from industry and research can be submitted until May 31, 2023.