The MUFFINS online store - buy it in the MPEG-21 way

Multimedia technology is being developed in light-speed velocity. The number of different players in the multimedia value and delivery chain is constantly increasing. New multimedia services and applications are emerging daily and furthermore, they are evolving constantly. However, the speed of the development, mass of information, numerous information providers and consumers, pose a great threat to the development of multimedia technology. This can be abridged by an adherence to the open standards, such as MPEG-21 multimedia framework. MPEG-21 is trying to set up an abstract model, which could unambiguously describe the multimedia content, allow seamless access and delivery of the content including the intellectual property management and protection mechanisms. Even more, the abstract model being developed is designed to allow future technologies to be implemented within. MPEG-21 promises to solve several issues within the domain of multimedia content distribution. Nevertheless this remains to be proven through implementation and wide acceptance. Consequently, the MUFFINS (multimedia framework for interoperability in secure environments) project has started to closely follow and monitor the development of the MPEG-21 standard, also implemented in an MPEG-21 real-life scenario. The goal of this study is to prove the MPEG-21 concept and to show its impact on the multimedia technology development as well as to monitor and contribute to the development of MPEG-21 standard. In this article, the basic concepts of the MPEG-21 standard and the MUFFINS project are presented.