Multimedia service platform technologies (MPEG-M) specifies two main components of a multi­media device, called peer in MPEG-M.

The first component is API: High-Level API for applications and Low-Level API for network, energy and security. The second components is a middleware called MXM that relies specifically on MPEG multimedia technologies.

The Middleware is composed of two types of engine. Technology Engines are used to call functionalities defined by MPEG standards such as creating or interpreting a licence attached to a content item. Protocol Engines are used to communicate with other peer, e.g. in case a peer does not have a particular Technology Engine that another peer has. For instance, a peer can use a Protocol Engine to call a licence server to get a licence to attach to a multimedia content item. The MPEG-M middleware can create chains of Technology Engines (Orchestration) or Protocol Engines (Aggregation).

MPEG-M is a 5-part standard

1. Part 1 – Architecture specifies the architecture, and High- and Low-Level API
2. Part 2 – MPEG extensible middleware (MXM) API specifies the API
3. Part 3 – Conformance and reference software
4. Part 4 – Elementary services specifies the elementary services provided by the Protocol En­gines
5. Part 5 – Service aggregation specifies how elementary services can be aggregated.