Legendary MPEG founder Leonardo Chiariglione has resigned, leading to the shuttering of the MPEG Group for unknown reasons. Despite pressure from emerging codecs and confusion around the three-way HEVC patent pool fragmentation, MPEG was clearly not going anywhere anytime soon. However, an ominous message on the MPEG Group homepage reads, “MPEG used to provide a proven mechanism to bring research results into standards that promote innovation for the benefit of all.” It comes only a few months after heavyweights Huawei, Samsung, and Qualcomm all put weight behind the recently approved essential video coding (EVC) standard as part of MPEG-5 Part 1, while Part 2 (LCEVC) has been gaining momentum in recent months. It’s possible these factors contributed to the MPEG…