Antenna Entertainment partners with Insys VT, Cheppers and Frontside to launch OTT platforms for AXN video assets
Antenna Entertainment, a private international technology, media, and entertainment company operating on the European market, has recently acquired the rights to the AXN video assets. To share the content with its viewers, the company decided to launch dedicated video on demand (VOD) streaming platforms simultaneously for over a dozen countries.
In May 2022, they partnered with an over-the-top (OTT) solution provider Insys Video Technologies, a software development company Frontside, and Drupal expert Cheppers. Both Insys and Cheppers are Amazon Web Services (AWS) Advanced Tier Services Partners with proven customer experience and a strong team of trained and certified technical individuals. The collaboration resulted in a successful platform launch in several countries, including Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Bulgaria.
‘Combining the expertise and skills of Cheppers, Frontside, and Insys Video Technologies resulted in a product that answers all of our needs,’ says Szabolcs Vértesi, Head of IT at Antenna Entertainment.
‘Insys provided a high-quality embedded video player that supports in-content advertisements and a CMS panel. Meanwhile, Cheppers and Frontside focused on our Drupal websites. They migrated them on AWS, upgraded and stabilised Drupal and migrated the video player,’ he adds.
Another task was to protect the content against piracy and illegal restreaming. Insys Video Technologies handled this challenge by implementing Cloud DRM – their digital rights management solution built on AWS and available on AWS Marketplace. The solution’s auto-scalable infrastructure can handle any viewing peak without affecting the platform’s performance.
The project’s biggest challenge, however, was the sheer number of video assets that needed to be imported onto the platform.
‘To make sure we meet the project’s deadlines, we have designed a solution that speeds up importing the video assets to the administrator panel,’ says Jarosław Kassner, Project Manager at Insys Video Technologies.
‘It automates the process and adds several quality-of-life improvements, such as connecting the mp4 files with media files,’ he explains.
In the future, Antenna Entertainment and Insys VT are planning to implement several more updates to the content management system (CMS) that will make it significantly easier to deliver new AXN video materials. Those include a solution for importing a large number of assets without having to manually navigate the administrator panel.
Want to see the finished product for yourself? Visit one of the AXN websites: