Instant VoD product Booxcloud, a fully managed SaaS cloud-TV kit, was launched by Booxmedia at IBC2014. It aims to allow individual content owners with smaller but loyal audiences to deploy standalone video streaming services.
The ‘brand-able’ service includes a HTML5 user-interface for all browser-enabled devices, branding according to templates provided by Booxmedia, UI localisation support, SD quality streaming, and the Booxmedia CMS and stats tools.
Optional features, such as native iOS, Android and Windows Phone clients, HD quality streaming, social sharing and targeted video ads, can be further customised based on ready-made building blocks.
“Alongside the larger content owners, there is a growing number of individual production teams built around big brands, branded individually,” explained Jaakko Ollila (pictured), VP of sales at Booxmedia. “We’ve had lots of contact from lower league sports tiers and clubs and many of those clubs have their own TV channels, have very strong local fan bases but can’t provide large enough audiences to interest broadcasters or TV channels. The technology is now here to stream and get the content up there in very high quality through services like Booxcloud.”
Ollila believes the market is headed towards a model where consumers will have the choice between local IPTV services, aggregated OTT entertainment bundles as well as a plethora of individual title-specific VoD apps.
“Demand is going to rise for these ‘individual service pockets’ which will be found by consumers using increasingly sophisticated recommendation engines,” concluded Ollila.
This story also appears on IBC’s Content Everywhere.
