On September 18, 2025, the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS) released its list of recipients of the 76th Annual Technology & Engineering Emmy Awards winners, which includes the MPEG Systems Working Group (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29/WG 3) as the recipient of an award for Standardization of the Common Media Application Format (CMAF). This follows about three years after MPEG Systems received three Emmys in 2021 and 2022 for the ISO Base Media File Format, MPEG DASH, and Open Font Format standards, and is a further acknowledgment of the important role played by MPEG in the development of modern multimedia technology. CMAF corresponds to the ISO/IEC 23000-19 international standard.
CMAF defines how to construct fragmented media objects for large-scale video distribution over the Internet, building on the ISO Base Media File Format standard, which itself was recognized by a Technology & Engineering Emmy Award in 2021. As the name of the standard implies, the format defined by CMAF can be commonly used for a variety of delivery methods, including adaptive streaming, broadcasting, and video download. For example, same CMAF conformant media objects can be commonly used for an MPEG DASH solution or other industry solutions such as the HLS.
Development of CMAF standard has iconically demonstrated how the international standards can help the industry by eliminating market fragmentation through unified solutions. In early days of HTTP-based streaming service, the industry was suffering from fragmentation of media formats. Two major industry players of the HTTP-based streaming solution, namely Microsoft and Apple, come to MPEG Systems with a proposal to develop a common media format together with other experts in the group. Competitive collaboration practices and expertise of the group has successfully facilitated the harmonization.
Krasimir Kolarov, who has led the CMAF development activity from the very beginning, expressed his excitement, saying, “CMAF is a result of multi-year collaboration with the goal of standardizing a common, industry-wide technology. With the proliferation of streaming services across a wide variety of devices – phones, tablets, computers, portable devices, TVs – the need for interoperable solution that is universally supported is paramount. The technology recognized by this award is a major step in that direction.”
Youngkwon Lim, the Convenor of the MPEG Systems Working Group, appreciated the recognition, saying “The award amplifies the importance of the standards and appreciation of that by the industry. It also proves that how the MPEG Systems WG successfully carries out its mission.”
Gary Sullivan, the Chair of the SC 29 parent organization of the MPEG and JPEG working groups, congratulated the MPEG Systems Experts Group on the award with the comments, “This award, now the tenth Emmy received by experts groups in ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 29 and the sixth for MPEG Systems technology, shows the key role played by SC 29’s experts groups in the development and use of today’s and tomorrow’s digital media technology.”
For a decade long development of the technology, Cyril Concolato, Krasimir Kolarov, John Simmons and Iraj Sodagar have led the work as the chairs of the group. Stefano Battista, Michael Dolan, Ingo Hofmann, Kilroy Hughes, Dimitri Podborski, David Singer, Thomas Stockhammer, Gilles Teniou and Ye-Kui Wang have served as the editors of the specification. In addition, many experts have contributed the development. Imed Bouazizi, Romain Bouqueau, Sachin Deshpande, Jean Le Feuvre, Per Fröjdh, Harald Fuchs, Alex Giladi, Jeffrey Goldberg, Dirk Griffioen, Miska M. Hannuksela, Will Law, Bill May, Rufael Mekuria, Adrian Murtaza, Kyung Mo Park, Stephen Perrott, Kashyap Kammachi Sreedhar, Arjen Wagenaar and Waqar Zia are some recognizable names. The development of the standard has been made possible through the support of many institutions. The short list includes Akamai Technologies, Apple Inc., BBC Research and Development, Cisco Systems, Comcast, Dolby Laboratories, Ericsson, Fraunhofer IIS, Major League Baseball Advanced Media, Microsoft Corporation, Inc., Netflix, Nokia, Qualcomm Incorporated, Samsung Electronics Co, Ltd., Sharp, Telecom Paris and Unified Streaming.
Since 1948, the Technology & Engineering Emmy® Awards honor development and innovation in TV-related technology and recognize companies, organizations, and individuals for breakthroughs in this field.
Overall, MPEG has previously received six Technology & Engineering Emmy® Awards from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (NATAS), and among them MPEG Systems has received five, for MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 in 1996, the MPEG-2 Transport Stream in 2014, the ISO Base Media File format in 2021, MPEG-DASH in 2022, and the MPEG Open Font Format also in 2022.