Tag Archive for: Streaming service

Jessica Glad

Say Hello to Home Cine! A Fresh Take on Streaming, Powered by Icareus

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Helsinki, April 24, 2025 – Finland has welcomed a new streaming service for movies and TV series: Kotikino (eng. Home Cine), launched in April by Finnish company Nordic Content Distribution Ltd.. The service is built on the Icareus Video Cloud OTT solution.

Nordic Content Distribution (NCD) introduced its first streaming service Kirjastokino, aimed at public libraries, already back in 2019. It quickly gained widespread popularity and is now available in over 100 Finnish municipalities. However, the streaming landscape has changed. Many viewers feel that digital services have become too similar and often fail to offer anything truly interesting to watch. One reason for this is that most streaming decisions are made outside of Europe, leading to increasingly homogenized content and service models – leaving many films and genres out of reach.

Home Cine’s mission is to highlight and provide access to high-quality European movie and TV-series content.

“We’ve noticed that this kind of content easily falls into limbo while major international platforms take time to decide on their acquisitions. In addition, we plan to focus on other underserved genres, such as children’s films, anime, horror, and sci-fi, which also tend to be overlooked in many streaming services,” says the team behind the service.

At launch, Home Cine offers around 2,000 films, plus TV series and episodes. The catalog will expand weekly with new titles, meaning the service is constantly evolving.

One key advantage compared to many other platforms is that Home Cine offers both a monthly subscription and a rental model for individual films.

The platform is built using Icareus OTT platform, solution packed with versatile features that enable full management of the video service, including:

  • Uploading and migrating movies and TV series via a user interface or API integration
  • Video preparation, transcoding, categorization, and metadata management
  • Monetization through paid content packages and optionally advertisements
  • End-user registration and account management
  • Global content delivery via a robust CDN
  • End-user interfaces and video apps for various platforms
  • Analytics and reporting tools

In addition to the video platform, Icareus designed and developed Home Cine apps for iOS and Android. Smart TV applications will be released in the next phase of the service.

With Icareus Video Cloud handling the technical side, NCD can focus on content and building customer relationships instead of platform maintenance and development.

Home Cine is available on web at https://kotikino.fi and as mobile apps in app stores under the name Kotikino.

Nordic Content Distribution Oy is a Finnish company founded in 2019. It develops and operates the Kotikino (eng. Home Cine) and Kirjastokino (eng. Library Cine) streaming services. The company is privately owned, and its team has over 50 years of combined experience in the video and media industry across various companies and services. Read more: https://kotikino.fi tai https://www.linkedin.com/company/nordic-content-distribution/

Icareus Ltd is a growing and profitable Finnish company providing SaaS video cloud services. Our company serves customers from over 60 countries. Icareus OTT solution is a turnkey white-label video cloud solution for media, TV and content owners. It offers versatile tools for the production, management, publication and (optionally) commercialization of live streaming, videos and events.
More information: https://icareus.com/products/white-label-ott-platform/

Relevant material

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Icareus OTT Solution presentation

More information about the Icareus OTT Solution

Icareus OTT Platform

Read more about our market leading Icareus OTT Platform from our website

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Jessica Glad

Icareus Video Cloud enables a new streaming service: Elonet+

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Helsinki, 16.01.2024, The Finnish National Audiovisual Institute (KAVI), in collaboration with Icareus, has launched Elonet, a new streaming service called Elonet+. This service is designed to offer an even wider range of possibilities to enjoy Finnish film production anywhere and anytime, completely free of charge for the viewer.

The Elonet+ streaming service is hosted on Icareus Video Cloud, making use of its wide range of features. The ease of cloud computing allows KAVI’s experts to focus entirely on curating the content themselves. Icareus Video Cloud enables content owners, public organisations and businesses to deliver their own branded video services securely, quickly and cost-effectively. In addition to the video platform, Icareus designed and implemented Elonet+ applications and user interfaces for various devices, including iOS and Android mobile apps and AppleTV, AndroidTV, LG and Samsung SmartTV apps.Thanks to Icareus Video Cloud’s API interfaces, the challenging migration project, during which thousands of Elonet+ video content and metadata were imported from KAVI’s various video platforms, was completed with minimal human resources.

"It has been important for KAVI to improve the accessibility of its films. The Elonet+, implemented in partnership with the Icareus people, meets a need expressed by customers and we at KAVI are proud of this achievement."

Pekka Tähtinen
Head of Digital Services at KAVI

"We are honoured that KAVI chose Icareus Video Cloud as the solution for the new Elonet+ service. It's great to see how it brings together a vast amount of national film, TV and other content history in one place, and makes it available to all Finns."

Toni Leiponen
Toni Leiponen
CEO, Icareus Ltd

The new video service is off to an impressive start – the collection already contains more than 350 feature films, with 20-30 new titles being added every year. Among the films on offer are the old, familiar Pekka Puupää comedy films, the 1955 Unknown Soldier, Pojat (1962), based on Paavo Rintala’s famous novel, and the true crime film Fraud (1988). TV series will not be ignored either, with a remastered 4K version of the Winter War TV series as its first taste. With around 3000 commercials, documentaries and short films, there’s plenty to keep you busy for a long time.
Elonet+ can be found at http://elonetplus.fi and in app stores under the same name.

Elonet+ devices

The National Audiovisual Institute (KAVI) preserves and makes available Finland’s audiovisual cultural heritage: films, television and radio programmes. The National Audiovisual Institute (KAVI) is a government agency under the Ministry of Education and Culture, whose activities are based on legislation. KAVI’s statutory tasks include the preservation of films and television and radio programmes, as well as related research, the supervision of the provision of image programmes and the promotion of media education.

Icareus Oy, founded in 2001, is a growing and profitable Finnish company providing SaaS video cloud services. Our company serves customers from over 60 countries. Our main product, the customisable Icareus Video Cloud Service, enables the publishing of professional video services for organisations. The service is suitable for both internal and external use in various contexts, such as content services, virtual and hybrid events, communication, marketing and training. All this easily and affordably from the cloud, for all terminals.

Icareus Suite is the most versatile online SaaS video cloud service in Europe, used by a wide range of actors such as sports organisations, companies, 3rd sector operators, TV channels, operators and public organisations. We offer a wide range of features such as Live streaming broadcasts, Video-on-demand streaming services, customisable video portals, events, social media integrations, subscriber management, ad management, paywalls and a handy mobile app to upload videos from your mobile phone to the service. All Icareus video services are always brand-safe and can be customised to look like the customer with selected features.

Relevant material

Downloads & further reading

Additional materials regarding this article

Presentation: Icareus white-label OTT solution

Presentation with further information about the service and its numerous applications.

Web page: Icareus white-label OTT solution

Read more about the customizable Icareus Video Cloud on our website.

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