The future of streaming media may be shaped just as much in Berlin’s R&D labs as it is in Silicon Valley, if this year’s Fraunhofer Fokus Media Web Symposium (MWS) is anything to go by. The annual event, hosted by German research powerhouse Fraunhofer Fokus, served as a proving ground for video engineering — offering everything from low-latency QUIC experiments to AI-fueled traffic forecasting. While headlines are fixated on generative AI and content licensing disputes (see separate story), the work showcased at MWS is a reminder that latency and the ever-moving target of quality of experience (QoE) remain painful headaches. At the core of Fraunhofer’s efforts is FAMIUM, the institute’s long-running umbrella for advanced media tools and testbeds.…