2 million Finns to enjoy library streaming service powered by Icareus Suite TV & Online Video cloud

Helsinki, 28.05.2020, Icareus Suite Online Video & TV cloud was selected for the national libraries’ subscription VOD service launched by Nordic Content Distribution in October 2019. The service, Kirjastokino, is being offered by over 100 municipalities in Finland, covering more than 2 million Finns.

Online video viewing has grown exponentially while traditional DVD and blu-ray viewing has collapsed. At the same time, various e-library services are steadily growing as people are reading more and more e-books and e-magazines as well as listening to audiobooks. Nordic Content Distribution launched a new VOD service, Kirjastokino (in English “Library Cinema”), in October 2019 to meet the needs of today’s libraries and consumers.

Library Cinema is a subscription VOD service where library card holders can watch movies, TV series and other videos free-of-charge. The amount of content is constantly growing and currently the service boasts with over 1000 movies and TV series.

Nordic Content Distribution Ltd needed a reliable and scalable cloud-based video solution for Kirjastokino with a customizable user interface to offer an appealing consumer user experience and brand. To reach as big audience as possible it was required that Kirjastokino can be used on desktop, tablets and mobile with a future path to smartTVs and other big screens.

The subscription is managed via library cards and thus Kirjastokino is integrated with library customer management systems such as Axiell Aurora, Mikromarc and Koha. In addition, Kirjastokino offers age rating control to prevent underage children from viewing content that is not suitable to them.

Managing thousands of hours of video content with extensive metadata can be a huge challenge without proper tools and interfaces. Icareus Suite Online Video & TV cloud offered Nordic Content Distribution a seamless content management flow from their editors all-the-way to end-users’ eyes.

The Icareus Suite Online Video & TV cloud ticked all the boxes. Mr Markku Vainio, CEO of Nordic Content Distribution comment: “We have been most satisfied with the cooperation with Icareus. Their decades of experience from online video, flexible service attitude and mature video cloud provide a security foundation for our Library Cinema and other services of the future.”

Icareus’ CEO Mr Toni Leiponen commented: “Subscription VOD services are seldom published in our home market. It is our pleasure, and honour to be providing a robust cloud platform for Kirjastokino, which has gained great popularity among libraries and consumers already during the first months”.

Kirjastokino is constantly developed, both technically and content wise, in collaboration by Nordic Content Distribution and Icareus. In the spring, Kirjastokino launched its first TV series and during 2020 it will launch its own Kirjastokino mobile application and Smart TV applications.

Icareus Suite Online Video and TV platform, OVTP, enable content owners, broadcasters, TV operators and publishers to manage, monetize and distribute their on-demand video and live content. It is a complete cloud service to manage video assets, channels and subscribers, for both subscription and transactional business models. Icareus Suite Cloud provides a high quality, scalable and robust video cloud, even for global needs.

Read more: https://icareus.com/online-video-and-tv-platform/ and https://icareus.com/solutions/white-label-ott-platform/

Nordic Content Distribution Ltd, founded in 2019, develops and maintains online video content services. The company operates both in B2B and B2C markets targeting specifically libraries and consumer customers. Its first service is Library Cinema (in Finnish “Kirjastokino”), an e-library subscription VOD service published in 2019 in Finland. Kirjastokino includes movies, TV series and other videos that library customers can watch free of charge. More information: https://www.kirjastokino.fi  (In Finnish and Swedish)

Icareus Ltd is an online video technology and broadcast TV specialist founded in 2001 and having offices in Finland and Spain. Icareus provides video cloud solutions and trusted broadcast TV platforms and our solutions are enjoyed by millions of consumers via our broadcaster, operator, OTT and OVP customers in over 60 countries.  Combining online and broadcast has been the core of our activities over almost two decades. We’ve been making the change from linear TV to today’s multi-screen experience.

More information: https://www.icareus.com