Creating a feature-rich subscriber-based OTT entertainment service

Helge Hoibraaten

Published 1st May 2013

TV Everywhere has become a way of life in the Nordic market, where every major broadcaster has succeeded in taking its services over the top and into the online video space. One of those broadcasters – pan-Nordic pay-TV channel provider C More Entertainment – has offered Web TV services for years through its online video portal.

Competition for viewers is fierce, so when high-value international brands announced plans to launch a subscription-based over-the-top (OTT) service in the Nordic market, C More Entertainment had to act fast to beat the impending competitors to market. The goal was to create a website for distributing content from C More Film – and that meant building a complete service from scratch and taking it to market within weeks.

C More had been working with partner Vimond Media Solutions for years. Vimond’s advanced Vimond Media Platform provides a comprehensive environment for managing and delivering multiformat OTT services, with full facilities for all creative, logistical, and business aspects of the operation. With its modular architecture, Vimond offers sophisticated tools and controls for every aspect of an OTT service, from ingest and encoding through conditional access to business intelligence reporting. Because C More was already using Vimond’s OTT delivery platform, as well as Vimond’s APIs to build services on top of that platform, the foundation for the service was already in place. However, the process of building a service with APIs usually takes months, not weeks. Fortunately Vimond provided a new Web framework that would serve as a layer between the APIs and the portal, tying everything together and enabling implementation in record time.

Using that framework, the team created Filmnet, an OTT distributor of C More Film that allows subscribers to watch as much programming as they want for a fixed monthly rate. Filmnet gives viewers access to all of the content from C More Film, including national and international blockbuster movies and TV series from major studios, as well as favorites from Swedish TV4 and Svensk Filmindustri (SF) – all with subtitles for the various Nordic markets. Just as important, the Filmnet site offers advanced features such as an episode chooser, clip info, language chooser for viewing and subtitling, the ability to create playlists, a streaming-quality monitor, and social media functionality.

Vimond’s Web framework is built on the Ruby on Rails® open-source language and provides a library of features that are already implemented on Vimond APIs, which meant developers could build the Filmnet site without having to create code from scratch. It was this framework that made Filmnet project particularly innovative. The fact that Filmnet is built on the Vimond framework resulted in two major benefits. The first is speed. Having a framework meant that the website could be built quickly and was sure to work on any browser or device. Second, the framework provided advanced Web technologies that allowed for sophisticated features that work with HTML5, such as drag-and-drop functionality and Javascript refreshes.

Vimond and C More began the project in August 2012, and Filmnet.se was released to the public at the end of September 2012. Vimond’s Web framework allowed the team to create a feature-rich Filmnet site in record time, and its advanced knowledge of how to use technologies such as Smooth Streaming with DRM, Widevine, Flash® HTTP, Dynamic Streaming, and HLS ensures great video quality across all screens. C More Entertainment can now offer films and TV series to a rapidly growing market, helping them to secure greater market share and give their audiences greater TV experiences than they could have gotten before.

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