LOS ANGELES—Cinedigm Corp. has announced that it is rebranding itself to Cineverse to emphasize the fact that it is a global streaming technology and entertainment company with one of the world’s largest portfolios of owned and operated streaming channels. 

“We have come a very long way from the Cinedigm of 10 years ago, which specialized in digital innovation within the cinema industry,” Chris McGurk, chairman and CEO of Cineverse, stated. “Today we officially turn the page to become Cineverse, a pure-play business in the exciting and dynamic streaming content and technology space. Our mission is to give audiences a level of access like never before to the vast universe of film and television entertainment through the power of our proprietary technology and the breadth of our content offerings. We plan to continue expanding our media library, currently at over 60,000 titles and growing rapidly, so that we have more compelling content and streaming channels to offer audiences than any other player in the entertainment business. Our recent investments and acquisitions have enabled us to become a leader across multiple entertainment genres, spanning Anime and Asian entertainment, to faith & family, horror, independent film and many other genres.” 

“Having now fully moved beyond our legacy digital cinema business at the end of our last fiscal year ended March 31, 2023, we believe a new company name more accurately reflects our business and brand as it stands today – a leading brand at the intersection of entertainment and innovation,” McGurk added. 

Along with the corporate name change to Cineverse Corp., the Company’s stock symbol will also change from CIDM to CNVS; its shares will commence trading on the NASDAQ Capital Market under the new stock symbol “CNVS” at the market opening on May 23, 2023. All stock trading, filings and market-related information will be reported under the new stock symbol going forward. 

LOS ANGELES & OULU, Finland—Cinedigm Corp. has announced that it will be using Valossa Labs OY as its video Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology partner and vendor for its flagship streaming service Cineverse.

Cinedigm said the agreement will enhance the user experience for Cineverse by utilizing Valossa's human-level cognitive automation systems and Valossa Autopreview, which is a fully automated promotion engine that creates a more dynamic content experience and drives deeper viewer engagement. 

"As we continue to increase the size of our content offering on Cineverse, the need to refine and improve content discovery becomes more paramount to our goal of becoming the 'Spotify of Independent Film,'" stated Tony Huidor, Cinedigm's chief technology and product officer. "By design, one of the many competitive advantages that our Matchpoint platform offers us is the ability to leverage innovative third-party technologies and integrate with cutting-edge technology providers, like Valossa, to continually innovate and raise the bar on what users expect of their streaming services".

Valossa's video automation product Autopreview detects and interprets deep audio-visual content on a frame-by-frame basis in order to create frame-accurate contextual metadata tags and generate professional-grade video previews automatically for the films and television series offered on Cineverse. This will help improve content programming, content discovery and targeted advertising. 

"We are proud to deliver our cutting-edge AI technology to Cinedigm, the premier independent streaming company in the US," noted Mika Rautiainen, CEO of Valossa Labs OY. "This partnership is a testament to our pursuit of delivering next-generation media solutions that help companies monetize their titles across global markets by leveraging recent advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence."

Cinedigm told TV Tech today that it is considering taking legal action against Dead Talk Media which had issued a press release attacking Cinedigm over a programming deal that went sour in 2021, ending up in court. 

In the release, titled “CINEDIGM, Another Hollywood Story Involving Bad Distribution And Concerning Contractual Breaches In The Entertainment Industry,” Dead Talk Media, a TV/film production and distribution company, accused Cinedigm, a worldwide distributor of film and TV programming, of continuing to distribute the company’s “Dead Talk Live,” even after it accused Cinedigm of contractual breaches: 

“In the spring of 2022, Film/Television Studio Dead Talk Media LLC filed a lawsuit against Cinedigm Corporation on several complaints involving contractual breaches," the press release said. "In March of 2021, Dead Talk Media signed a Streaming Distribution deal with Cinedigm to deliver its Television Talk Show "Dead Talk Live" on Cinedigm's streaming platform Screambox and all the outlets that Screambox streams to, which includes Amazon Prime Video, Roku, and others."

“Dead Talk Live" premiered on "Screambox" in August 2021. In the Fall of 2021, Dead Talk Live accused Cinedigm of changing the stipulations of its contract, specifically regarding the schedule for reporting as well as a "lack of transparency" of those numbers.

Dead Talk Media said Cinedigm was also made aware of prominent errors in how "Dead Talk Live" was distributed on their Screambox outlets—most prominent of those errors being "Seasons" having the incorrect episodes and number of episodes.

Dead Talk Media said Cinedigm's President Gary Loffredo and Chief Operating Officer Yolanda Macias disregarded the company's request for an audit to which they said they were entitled to under the agreement, adding that no offer for an audit was made until Dead Talk Media filed a lawsuit in the Southern District of New York Federal Court in May of 2022.

According to Dead Talk Media, Cinedigm is still distributing "Dead Talk Live" content on several of the Screambox outlets. It accused Cinedigm of violating the termination of their agreement with Dead Talk Media by "failing to correct contractual breaches within the allotted 30 days from Cinedigm being notified of those breaches."

"This ongoing experience with Cinedigm has left me speechless," said John Vizaniaris, owner of Dead Talk Media. "These issues could have been resolved without any attorneys. Cinedigm has disregarded an agreement where the issues in dispute are laid out in black and white. Cinedigm continues to air 'Dead Talk Live' episodes to this day even though the contracted has been terminated."

The company says Cinedigm is still refusing to take down Dead Talk Media's content from its platform, disregarding an agreement made by both parties' attorneys to have the content removed and said that it is "going to continue to pursue the case in New York State Court till their content is returned to them by Cinedigm."

In response, Cinedigm issued the following statement:

"Cinedigm is not in breach of its contractual obligations. In fact, the lawsuit Dead Talk Media notes in its press release was voluntarily dismissed and both parties agreed that it had no merit. “Dead Talk Live” was streamed non-exclusively on Cinedigm’s Screambox and its platforms (i.e., Amazon, Roku) - however the content was not successful, attracting virtually no viewership.

Acting in good faith, Cinedigm provided Dead Talk Media with advance funds as their content was in such poor condition that it required video editing. The result was that Cinedigm did not recoup its investment due to the show’s miniscule viewership.  As the Company believes these outrageous and unfounded claims made by Dead Talk Media are defamatory to our brand and are an impediment to conducting our business, we are unfortunately left with no choice but to pursue legal action."

SALT LAKE CITY—Cinedigm Corp. has announced a new integration with Vidgo that will add more than 10,000 new films and television series to Vidgo's expansive library of on-demand content.

Vidgo's extensive programming lineup includes more than 150 television networks featuring live sports, news and entertainment, along with an expansive library of on-demand content – which now includes over 40,000 shows, movies and documentaries – all accessible through the Vidgo streaming app, the service reported. 

"Our focus is to deliver an unbeatable value to our customers, while providing the content that excites audiences the most – whether it's a major sporting event or the next Blockbuster hit," said Derek Mattson, CEO of Vidgo. "Cinedigm is an ideal partner to help us achieve this goal. With more than 10,000 new titles, Vidgo can now offer even more of the programming our audiences love and crave, for the best value in the streaming industry. With more than 10,000 new titles, Vidgo can continue to deliver even more of the content our audiences love at the best value in the streaming industry."

The new programming from Cinedigm span across a plethora of popular genres, including animation, westerns, and documentaries, and are sourced from Cinedigm's vast library of premium content. 

Vidgo comes in four "flavors," all of which offer Vidgo's entire on-demand library of 40,000 titles and more. 

• Vidgo Mas ($39.95 per month) features 42 live and on-demand Spanish-language channels, including content from Univision and UniMás local broadcast stations and Fox Deportes, Discovery Familias and many all-around entertainment options. 
• Vidgo Plus ($64.95 per month) features over 110 channels and more college sports than any other streaming service. 
• Vidgo Premium ($79.95 per month) offers unlimited access to more than 150 television networks. 
• Vidgo Ultimate ($99.95 per month) provides the industry's best bilingual streaming package with 195 live-streaming, on-demand and DVR viewing of English, Spanish and bilingual channels. This includes 35 sports networks, the championship games for NFL, MLB and international soccer, games from 20 college sports conferences, and access to 90 Univision and UniMás local channels based on the viewer's location.

LOS ANGELES, Calif.—Cinedigm has inked a deal with the Giving Company to acquire the movie review and ratings service Dove.org and the faith-based streaming platform Christian Cinema. 

The two brands will be combined with Cinedigm’s existing streaming service the Dove Channel, and will allow Cinedigm to provide an expanded offering of faith and family entertainment.

Cinedigm and Dove.org first partnered in 2015 to launch the family-focused Dove Channel. Cinedigm will now operate both services and integrate them into a single offering of family-friendly content.

Founded in 1991, Dove.org’s mission is “to encourage and promote the creation, production, distribution and consumption of wholesome family entertainment,” the companies said. 

Its legacy goes back two decades to the organization’s first “Dove Approved” seal of approval given to thousands of titles since inception.  Today the organization publishes reviews, news, podcasts and rates films, TV shows, video games, online content and more through its website, email newsletters and social channels to help families make informed media choices. 

Christian Cinema is a transactional video-on-demand (TVOD) service for faith-based films, offering the ability to buy or rent movies with Christian values via ChristianCinema.com as well as leading app platforms such as Apple TV, iOS, Android, Roku, Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, and Amazon Fire tablets.  

The deal comes at a time when the Faith & Family film & TV market vertical continues to see rapid growth. A research study published by Grandview Research in 2020, estimated that more than $1.5 billion is spent annually in the sector in North America and that the market is expected to grow at 20% CAGR through 2027.

“Over the last few years, we have perfected what we think is the best approach to enthusiast streaming: giving customers more of what they want in the medium they want – movies, podcasts, editorial, commerce – under the business model of their choice,” said Erick Opeka, president and chief strategy officer of Cinedigm. “This has led to record growth in other verticals for us, including Fandom, Genre, and Asian content, and we think that Faith & Family could be bigger than all of those combined. This one-two punch of acquisitions immediately provides us with an established consumer base, immediately accretive revenue, and multiple new avenues for growth. Much like we have done in other verticals, we expect to dramatically ramp up our offerings in original theatrical releases, podcasts, publishing, audiobooks and more. It is an exciting time to see this culmination after nearly 8 years of successful partnership with Dove.org and Giving Company.”

LOS ANGELES—Cinedigm Corp. has announced that it has integrated ROW8 into its streaming service, Cineverse, in an agreement that will allow Cineverse users to rent recently released premium movies as well as select films still in theaters on a transactional video-on-demand (TVOD) basis. 

ROW8 offers the latest Hollywood movies and makes them available to consumers before they are released on subscription streaming services. Hit films available at launch include "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever", "Puss in Boots: The Last Wish", "Babylon", "Plane" and "M3GAN".

"ROW8 has established itself through their consumer-friendly approach to transactional streaming and by providing access to high-quality major Hollywood studios as well as independent new releases and evergreen titles," remarked Cinedigm's chief technology & product offcer, Tony Huidor. "With this deal, Cinedigm significantly enhances Cineverse's film catalog and joins an elite club of streaming platforms that offer in-theater and newly released films. As we continue to work towards our goal of making Cineverse the `Spotify of Film’, we aim to offer movie lovers one of the most compelling and complete streaming experiences in the industry."

The deal with ROW8 substantially increases the breadth of content on Cineverse by providing access to premium titles via a "Still in Theaters" promotional shelf on the website's main page and a dedicated section on Cineverse showcasing ROW8's full content offering, the companies said. 

ROW8's entire catalog of over 2,000 titles will be featured on Cineverse and available within Cineverse's search feature. Premium titles can be rented via cineverse.com with support for viewing rented titles on additional platforms coming shortly, the companies said. 

ROW8 currently has licensing deals with major Hollywood studios including Disney, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Universal Pictures, and Warner Bros., among others. Additionally, Cinedigm's own upcoming theatrical releases will be distributed on Cineverse via ROW8.

LOS ANGELES—Multi-platform producer Roundtable Entertainment and the streaming company Cinedigm have announced that they are working with GoPro Inc. to develop a 24/7 free ad-supported TV GoPro Channel that is expected to start streaming in the spring of 2023.

The GoPro Channel will feature original programming curated from GoPro's extensive library of sports and lifestyle videos, including both professionally produced and user-generated content, as well as new series produced from GoPro content by Roundtable, the companies said. 

The GoPro Channel will join Cinedigm's extensive portfolio of over 30 streaming channels, which span several popular content genres dedicated to serving enthusiastic fan bases.

GoPro's catalog has generated more than 3 billion views and 10 million subscribers on YouTube. The new channel will be made available as a FAST channel across connected TV, mobile, web, and other third-party platforms.

"GoPro is known for harnessing the power of 'wow,' and this content will open up many advertising opportunities for like-minded brands,” explained Roundtable co-founder Griffin Gmelich said. 

"We're excited for Roundtable and Cinedigm to help us amplify this mission by expanding the reach of our content catalog to new audiences,” added Rick Loughery, vice president of global marketing and communications at GoPro stated.

LOS ANGELES—Cinedigm Corp. has expanded the distribution of its free ad-supported TV (FAST) channels with the launch of RetroCrush on Sling TV. 

The agreement expands Sling TV’s partnership with Cinedigm to include fourteen channels, available free to consumers. 

“The expansion of our partnership with Sling TV embraces Cinedigm’s mission to bring its channels to the widest enthusiast audiences possible,” said John Stack, Senior Director, Cinedigm Business Development. “In turn, Sling will provide the opportunity for a passionate fan base to immerse itself in best-in-breed classic anime content it won’t find elsewhere with the addition of RetroCrush.”

RetroCrush, which focuses on the Golden Age of anime, is being added to Sling’s lineup of 190+ free live TV channels. 

Other Cinedigm channels already carried by Sling include: Bloody Disgusting TV, The Bob Ross Channel, Comedy Dynamics, Realmadrid TV, Dove Channel, CONtv, Docurama, The Only Way is Essex, MyTime TV, The Elvis Presley Channel, So…Real, Film Detective and Lonestar.

LOS ANGELES—Cinedigm Corp. has launched its new flagship streaming service - Cineverse. The previously announced free streaming service can be accessed via cineverse.com, and across iOS, Android and Roku apps.

Separately, Cinedigm announced a new deal with America’s premier college sports, news and entertainment streamer, Vidgo. 

Vidgo will become the first virtual MVPD to agree to distribute Cinedigm’s flagship streaming service, Cineverse. Vidgo plans to launch Cineverse this Fall.

Cinedigm reported that Cineverse plans to offer the world's largest streaming film & television library, which it hopes will be a competitive advantage in a period when major streaming services have been reducing their film and TV offerings and focusing on big-budget tentpole originals. 

Cinedigm said it will launch with entertainment content from its own streaming library provided by more than 600 licensors and that it expects to dramatically expand the licensor pool over the coming year.

"With the Cineverse launch today, we begin an important journey as a Company," said Chris McGurk, Cinedigm chairman and CEO. "Our mission is to build the Spotify of Independent film and television, with the largest library of film and TV programming in the world. Beyond that, our fantastic R&D team is working on tackling one of the biggest challenges in streaming today: how to make content discovery fun, easy and rewarding. All our streaming efforts over the last five years have led to this moment, and I'm excited to see us graduate into being an even bigger leader and disrupter in the high-growth streaming space."

"When we set out to build Cineverse, we decided that we weren't going to build another standard streaming service," said Erick Opeka, president and chief strategy officer of Cinedigm. "We took a deep look at the market and asked ‘What can we do to add value and improve fans and users' experiences?' What we found was pretty simple: people love choice but are increasingly frustrated with the chore of finding something to watch. While these precepts are simple, the technology to accomplish them is quite complex. Leveraging Matchpoint, our team has built a service that can scale to tens of millions of users and mixes world class hand curation with next generation search technologies. We plan on rolling these innovations out to our entire base of services in the coming weeks and months."

The service is also offering a starting lineup of free, ad-supported streaming television (FAST) linear channels that showcase Cinedigm-owned and managed channels including AsianCrush, Bloody Disgusting, The Bob Ross Channel, The Country Channel, CONtv, CONtv Anime, Crime Hunters, Docurama, The Dove Channel, The Elvis Presley Channel, Fandor and Screambox.

It is offering additional FAST channels via its partnership with leading cloud-based SaaS technology provider Amagi. 

Cineverse was built using the company's proprietary streaming technology platform, Matchpoint. It has the ability to scale up to millions of titles and millions of simultaneous users and offers AI-based content recognition and processing. 

In the coming months, Matchpoint will bring significant new enhancements to Cineverse, including Natural Language Search (NLP). This will allow users to conversationally interact with Cineverse's guide through natural speech or text dialogue.

WALTHAM, Mass.— Zixi has announced an integration of Zixi-as-a-Service (ZaaS) with Cinedigm’s Matchpoint Platform Suite. 

The move will help Cinedigm expand its free-ad-supported streaming (FAST) channel business. 

"Zixi delivers actionable insights on the health and performance of fast channels, enabling the operational agility we need to rapidly scale,” said Tony Huidor, chief technology & product officer at Cinedigm.  “Cinedigm has scaled to the point where we need to more directly manage distribution of our FAST channel portfolio, this partnership with Zixi makes that operationally possible and economically feasible.”

“Cinedigm needed a way to operationally manage the end-user experience,” said Peter Dawidzik, Director of Sales, Zixi.  “Integrating the full suite of Zixi capabilities with video-optimized cloud infrastructure, ZaaS delivers economic, performance and operational efficiencies that are supporting the rapidly scaling FAST channel delivery services Cinedigm offers.”

Through a diverse mix of premium SVOD services and dedicated AVOD and FAST channels, the Cinedigm has a portfolio of 30 streaming channels offering premium content in a variety of popular genres to 90 million consumers worldwide on more than a billion devices.

Cinedigm developed its own proprietary solution, Matchpoint Dispatch, for managing their massive library of film and television content and enriching content metadata, enforcing territorial along with platform rights and distributing scheduling metadata associated with the content library. 

Through a direct integration with ZaaS, Matchpoint utilizes Gracenote’s programming metadata and proprietary IDs to help organize assets, aid in audience discovery and support content scheduling across major FAST channel platforms, the companies said. 

Cinedigm’s Linear Playout partner originates a mezzanine Zixi-enabled master transport stream for each of Cinedigm’s channels, pushing these across geographically diverse signal paths to ZaaS. 

ZaaS provides Cinedigm real-time telemetry data, advanced network congestion and error-correction management and significant bandwidth efficiency improvements over deployed legacy systems. With well-structured hierarchical entertainment feed data, Cinedigm builds programmatic playout schedules. An electronic program guide is generated for each of over 20 channels, including defining ad avails within the program schedule. ZaaS transcode engines create a quality optimized ABR streaming ladder packaged for distribution to the content origin servers and validates stream health and compliance with each partner’s delivery specifications. ZaaS provides broadcast infrastructure as a service, enabling media companies and service providers to quickly leverage IP to ingest and distribute live video with ultra-low latency, allowing the push or pull of live and live linear video into or out of the cloud, Zixi said. 

With this service broadcasters can easily scale to add new partners, leveraging ZaaS for video processing as well as the additional data, analytics, security and Quality of Service that professional broadcast requires. ZaaS allows media and entertainment companies to extend existing on-premises infrastructures and capabilities to the cloud, and with ZEN Master, the industry's leading virtual control plane, users can orchestrate, manage and monitor broadcast quality, low latency live video workflows from anywhere in the world. Delivering the Zixi protocol, the most robust and mature live video protocol in the industry, ZaaS also supports RIST, RTP+FEC, HLS, CMAF HLS, DASH and RTMP to provide the industry’s most universal solution for ingest and delivery across any IP network and edge device including over 400 integrated partners. The SDVP also includes transcoding, packaging, and CDN origin for OTT workflows, as well as Packet Identifier (PID) mapping allowing content to be normalized to certain encoding parameters with PIDs aligned to downstream workflows, Zixi reported. 

LOS ANGELES—Cinedigm has announced plans for a new AVOD service Cineverse and the roll-out of a major update of their  Matchpoint Platform Suite that will leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to improve the streaming experience. 

The new Matchpoint Blueprint 2.0 will be used to launch Cinedigm’s new Cineverse AVOD service in August, which will bring together 15+ FAST channels and a massive VOD content library. 

“Our incredible engineering team in India has been working hard to maintain Matchpoint’s position as an industry-leading solution for building a streaming video service – one that can deliver content at scale to more than 75 different digital platforms in a fully automated manner – as well as distribute third-party content at half the cost of leading competitors,” said Tony Huidor, chief technology and product officer at Cinedigm.  “We are pleased with the achievements that have been made to-date and look forward to showing how our technology, along with some new innovative features, will enhance the user experience for all of our channels – starting with our forthcoming service, Cineverse.”

The Matchpoint Platform is the underlying technology used to power Cinedigm’s entire digital and OTT business as well as third-party streaming channels operated by Cinedigm. The platform also allows companies to easily launch their own direct-to-consumer streaming services.  

This summer, the company will roll out an enhanced Matchpoint Blueprint 2.0, which offers a robust and cost-efficient application framework to launch advanced full-featured video streaming apps across every major platform, with built-in support for various business models. 

The first streaming service to be powered by Matchpoint Blueprint 2.0 will be Cineverse , an all-in-one streaming channel and the newest addition to Cinedigm's growing portfolio of streaming services.

The service has a massive 46,000 title film & television episode catalog as well as more than two dozen owned & operated streaming brands, the company reported. 

Officially launching in late August, Cineverse will be an AVOD service featuring a broad lineup of more than 15 free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels – both company-owned and from third-party partners. 

The service will include the entire VOD content catalog and selection of FAST channels spanning various genres that are currently part of Cinehouse, a streaming service acquired with Digital Media Rights (DMR) earlier this year. 

Key highlights of the upcoming Cineverse launch include:

• Cineverse will initially launch on iOS, Android, Roku, Samsung and desktop web, with plans to be released on Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV, LG, webOS and HTML-5 by the end of year
• A premium subscription option that offers access to additional content as well as with no ads will be available in the Fall, details to be announced
• Cineverse will feature new major Hollywood releases available on a transactional (TVOD) rental basis, details to be announced
• Cineverse will include a channel lineup of over a dozen FAST linear channels with integrated electronic program guide (EPG), offering the ability to browse the catalog on a channel basis
• Through a partnership with audience engagement platform LiveLike, Cineverse will include elements of gamification such as the ability for viewers to earn loyalty points that will be redeemable for digital prizes and exclusive NFTs
• As an enhancement to the Company’s proprietary collaborative filtering content recommendations, Cineverse will provide more accurate content recommendations and relevant content shelves as well as advanced search capabilities based on intrinsic characteristics of a film such as tone, theme, storyline, mood and hundreds of other dimensions intrinsic to a film
• Cinedigm’s tightly integrated content delivery platform, Matchpoint Dispatch – also part of the Matchpoint Platform – will enable Cineverse to easily launch with more than 15,000 feature films & television shows spanning all the Company’s channels with thousands of additional titles to follow. 

OTTAWA—What do AT&T, Starbucks, and Tesla have in common? They all accept payments using various forms of cryptocurrency. Granted, these payment options are currently limited; for instance, you can use Dogecoin to buy Tesla clothing and car accessory purchases at shop.tesla.com, but not an electric car. Still, the fact that “crypto” (as it is commonly called) is finding growing acceptance as a legitimate form of payment is likely a sign of things to come.

In the TV broadcasting/content distribution market, companies such as Sling TV, Replay, Script TV and ZEBEDEE are pushing ahead with crypto payment transactions. The reason? “Crypto payments enable smart contracts that automatically generate payments in real time whenever video is viewed,” said Replay CEO Krish Arvapally. “For TV broadcasters and content deliverers, this eliminates the time spent tracking down and managing these payments.” 

Creators are happier too, Arvapally adds. “Instead of chasing down or waiting on royalty checks coming from a variety of sources, months after a video is played, the open-source and transparent nature of blockchain payments means that creators can trust that they’re being paid as soon as possible.”

Sling TV: Early Adopter
As of Feb. 22, Sling TV allows subscribers to pay their monthly bills using the crypto payment provider BitPay, which handles digital currencies such as Bitcoin, Dogecoin, or Ethereum. 

The only catch: “BitPay is available to established Sling customers and can be used to extend an existing monthly subscription,” a Sling TV spokesperson told TV Tech. “Notably, BitPay cryptocurrency payment is available any time after the first bill as a monthly subscriber, including after a free trial or promotional offer.”

This proviso notwithstanding, “accepting crypto payments was a natural next step for Sling subscribers,” the spokesperson added. “Sling’s new integration with BitPay adds to DISH Network’s already robust reputation as an industry innovator. In fact, DISH TV [which owns Sling TV] has accepted crypto payments since 2014.”

Watch TV, Get Rewarded
Imagine paying viewers to watch an ad-free, subscription-free OTT TV service with crypto: That’s the business based behind Rewarded TV, which is being launched by blockchain video tracking and payments platform Replay. 

“Our viewers will receive rewards and pay for premium content with RPLAY, a new crypto token built on Theta, the leading blockchain for entertainment organizations,” said Arvapally. “RPLAY will be available to exchange for cash, or can be earned by watching free content on Rewarded TV. 

“Users can also earn multipliers on their RPLAY earnings through ‘gamified content’—by engaging with certain promoted content or earning NFT passes in relation to specific viewing activities,” Arvapally added. “For example, sharing a specific piece of content or creating a playlist featuring certain movies or shows can yield additional rewards for driving engagement.” 

Viewers can also purchase NFTs, whose crypto payments will be used to pay content providers (along with revenues from gamified content promotions.) Worth noting: As soon as someone’s content is viewed, they get paid in RPLAY, a theta token by Replay.

If the Rewarded TV concept sounds rather unconventional for commercial OTT TV, it is. Using Rewarded TV to introduce new models of monetization, Replay is launching this service as a proof-of-concept, for their own open-source Replay video tracking and payments platform. But Arvapally is confident that the time is right for Rewarded TV and Replay. 

“The continued adoption of crypto payments in film and TV is a trend that is here to stay,” he said. “Digital streaming and syndication are perfect use cases for crypto payments: content owners and distributors will turn to crypto for its ease of use in distributing earnings in real time.”

In another deal with Theta, OTT distributor Cinedigm entered the crypto universe in 2021 by agreeing integrate the native Theta peer-to-peer streaming technology, blockchain protocol and Theta Fuel (TFUEL) micropayments on its CONtv Anime branded channel page. It allows visitors to Cindegigm’s CONtv to view its large library of anime, sci-fi, horror and cult shows and films directly using Theta’s fully decentralized technology and protocol.

Theta says integrating its blockchain allows entertainment and streaming platforms like Cinedigm to lower their video delivery CDN costs by 50% or more, while increasing user engagement, viewing times and monetization. Users in return can earn FUEL rewards for sharing video content utilizing their excess bandwidth and computing resources. The company adds that its blockchain approach enables fans to earn as much as $10-$15/month simply by watching their favorite content on their browser with no download required.

‘Tipping’ Content Providers
Although aimed at the online gaming world to allow viewers to “tip” their favorite live gamers using Bitcoin, ZEBEDEE’s ZBD Streamer software could potentially be used by broadcasters and OTT creators to boost their own revenues. For instance, viewers could signify their support for a specific player on a live TV series through tipping, with the crypto being split between the player and content producer.

“ZBD Streamer is a free OBS plugin that pairs with the user’s ZEBEDEE account, and allows live broadcasters to post a static QR code overlay onto their stream to accept tips from viewers via their smartphone,” said ZEBEDEE Marketing Director Mark Mulvey. “What’s great about this solution is that the audience can send payments as ‘microtransactions’—fractions of a penny—which until now was completely uneconomical and technically infeasible. 

“By transacting in tiny satoshi increments (a satoshi, or ‘sat,’ is 1/100,000,000th of one Bitcoin), broadcasters can collect affordable tips from viewers in a fun, frictionless way—without losing the ability to exchange those sats into their local fiat currency at a later time if they choose.” Mulvey added.

Could this technology be used in traditional OTA/OTT content advertising? According to Mulvey, the answer is, theoretically, yes. 

“The underlying Bitcoin Lightning Network technology certainly allows for this type of functionality, though no one to our knowledge has built out this specific solution just yet,” he said. “But similar innovations are occurring in the podcasting space, as something called ‘Podcasting 2.0’ [also known as the ‘Value-for-Value’ model] is allowing creators to receive sats streamed directly to them by listeners in lieu of, or in addition to, their traditional audio advertising revenue. This technology also makes the inverse possible: for advertisers to compensate listeners directly, streaming sats to their wallets based on how much of the ad was actually listened to.”

Script.TV Balances All Sides
About to be launched in its beta version, Script.TV seems to resemble Rewarded TV in that it too pays viewers in crypto for watching. However, the Script.TV model is actually quite different. 

Unlike Rewarded TV, Script.TV will play out its stable of free-to-watch TV channels and movies online like a conventional broadcaster. Its online TV programs will run on a schedule with no ability for viewers to jump back to the beginning, and with non-skippable ads being part of the content. This model will ensure that everyone, including content providers and advertisers, benefit from the Script.TV platform. 

“Although Script.TV gives viewers the opportunity to profit from their viewing time and personal data in return of SCRIPT blockchain tokens [SCPT] to reward them, it of course, is not our business model to purely just give out tokens,” said Script.TV Co-Founder Akeem Ojuko. As well, the company will encourage viewers to spend their SCPTs within the company through the sale of special NFTs.

In reality, Script.TV is actually an attempt to resolve content delivery bottlenecks commonly encountered online by creating a distributed, decentralized online base of content storage/playout. And it will make money for itself and content providers as well, with the latter being paid using a second class of tokens known as SPAYs based on how much their content is watched. These tokens will be convertible into conventional currencies, should content providers choose to sell them. 

In doing all of this, Script.TV’s goal “is to fix a lot of the problems that content providers and advertisers have in working in the online market,” Ojuko said.

SIDEBAR 

What is Theta? 

In 2017, Sliver.TV subsidiary Theta Labs announced that it was developing a decentralized video streaming network enabled by blockchain to provide less expensive video storage and playout to content providers worldwide. “The core of the network enables users worldwide with un-utilized PC bandwidth and resources to cache and relay video streams to others in the network and in turn mine Theta tokens, similar to Bitcoin and Ethereum,” the company said at the time.

Today, Theta Labs runs the “Theta Network” decentralized blockchain-enabled streaming platform using the company’s Mainnet 4.0 software. Google, Samsung, Sony, Creative Artists Agency (CAA), Binance, Blockchain Ventures, DHVC and gumi are  global enterprise validator partners while strategic corporate investors reportedly include Samsung NEXT, Sony Innovation Fund, Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments (BDMI), CAA, plus Silicon Valley VCs including DCM and Sierra Ventures.

To explain the company’s market position in more tangible terms, Replay and Rewarded TV are using Theta Labs’ TNT-20 (Theta Network Token-20) tokens as the basis of their RPLAY tokens on both services. 

Meanwhile, game show producer Fremantle is marking the 50th anniversary of CBS game show “The Price is Right” by issuing NFTs (non-fungible tokens) in collaboration with Theta Labs. The NFTs will feature popular “The Price Is Right” games such as Cliff Hangers, Plinko, and Punch-A-Bunch.

In addition, the “American Idol” brand partnered with Theta Network to launch NFTs to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the reality show which wrapped up in May. Featuring the Top 14 contestants from Season 20 of American Idol, the NFTs were sold for $99 as packs of digital trading cards. “Holders of the NFTs will participate in a five-week-long competition where they can win prizes based on how far contestants go,” Benzinga.com reported in April.  

LOS ANGELES, Calif.—Cinedigm Corp. has expanded its free-ad supported streaming channel offerings with the launch of The Elvis Presley Channel. 

The new FAST streaming channel was launched in partnership with Elvis Presley Enterprises, LLC and ABG Entertainment and features Elvis Presley films and specials along with additional movies, series and lifestyle programming inspired by Elvis. 

New, original series are also in development, the companies said. 

At launch in the U.S., the channel’s backers said that The Elvis Presley Channel is accessible on connected TVs, digital set-top boxes, media-streaming devices and online, reaching more than 100 million devices, including LG Channels, Amazon Freevee, VIZIO WatchFree+, Comcast's Xumo, Plex, Allen Media Group's Local Now and Dish Network's Sling TV. 

In addition, the Xfinity What to Watch channel on XUMO will feature a curated collection of films and documentaries from Cinedigm's Elvis channel during primetime starting the weekend of July 2, and continuing weekly throughout the rest of July.

"Elvis Presley is an iconic performer whose global appeal transcends across generations and a diverse range of fans," said Erick Opeka, president of Cinedigm Digital Networks. "We see his ongoing influence today in music, movies, fashion and culture. Building on this expansive legacy, The Elvis Presley Channel will provide compelling programs, including exclusive and eclectic original series and specials, across a variety of concert, documentary and scripted content genres. With the channel, we aim to not only thrill current fans and showcase Elvis' influences and demonstrate enduring impact but to engage new generations of fans through our curated and creative program line-up."

The launch comes at a time when Warner Bros. Pictures' has released the big-screen drama, “Elvis” and Graceland is planning to welcome fans from around the world to Memphis as they honor the 45th anniversary of Elvis's passing with Elvis Week 2022 from August 9 - August 17. 

Additionally, Netflix is slated to launch the Elvis animated action-comedy series "Agent King" and Sony has two Elvis albums planned later this year.

"We are thrilled for fans to immerse themselves in Elvis' world with the launch of The Elvis Presley Channel," said Matt Abruzzo, senior director of brand management, entertainment at Authentic Brands Group (ABG), owner of Elvis Presley Enterprises, LLC. "The Elvis fandom is incredibly passionate, and when it comes to serving enthusiastic fan bases, no one does it better than Cinedigm."

The launch of The Elvis Presley Channel continues Cinedigm's expansion of its portfolio of free and subscription-based streaming channels.

These include such brands as AsianCrush (pan-Asian), Bloody Disgusting (horror), Cocoro (kids/family), Comedy Dynamics (comedy), CONtv (fan culture), CONtv anime (anime), Crime Hunters (crime and paranormal), Dove Channel (family), Docurama (documentaries), El Rey Network (Latinx), Fandor (movies), Film Detective (classic film and TV), KMTV (K-pop), Lonestar (western), Midnight Pulp (horror/thriller/action), MyTime Movie Network (women), Real Madrid TV (football), RetroCrush (classic anime), Screambox (horror), So...Real (reality), The Bob Ross Channel (featuring 350+ episodes of the iconic public television series, The Joy of Painting), The Country Network (country music lifestyle TV), and The Only Way Is Essex (real-life soap).

LOS ANGELES—Streaming service Cinedigm is working with augment reality (AR) technology provider Nreal to bring three of its channels to Nreal’s newly launched AR TV app, Cinedigm announced today.

The deal makes three Cinedigm channels –Bloody Disgusting TV, Realmadrid TV and CONtv, available to fans of immersive technology. In December 2021, Nreal launched AR glasses for consumers in the United States through a partnership with Verizon.

"Our partnership with Cinedigm in the U.S. comes at an exciting time, as we're building out a holistic AR experience for consumer audiences. For the first time, fans can now engage with Cinedigm's streaming content through Nreal's AR glasses, on a 220-inch virtual HD screen," said Nreal co-founder Peng Jin.

The Nreal Light glasses tether to an Android smartphone, giving users access to immersive AR experiences. Cinedigm’s Matchpoint 2.0 technology stack makes it possible for partners to compete in streaming markets and take advantage of the opportunities presented by the next phase of development in the entertainment industry, the company said.

Nreal is pushing to bolster its content ecosystem with its new AR TV app that allows for simple integration with streaming content. Besides its spatial content layout, the app provides a Theatre Mode that projects a virtual 220-inch-sized HD screen that takes full advantage of Nreal Light's display quality, the company said.

Bloody Disgusting TV is a free streaming service offering theatrical releases, original content and cult favorites in the horror genre. Realmadrid TV gives viewers access to two to three matches per week during Real Madrid’s season of La Liga games as well as UEFA Champions League and Cup tournaments. CONtv offers films and TV shows in the action/thriller, horror, anime and sci-fi/fantasy genres.

"Cinedigm is committed to embracing the best and most innovative technologies that entertain our audiences in compelling ways," said Tony Huidor, chief technology & product officer at Cinedigm. "We are proud to be a U.S. launch partner of Nreal. This partnership provides a direct path for us into the emerging metaverse through the ongoing evolution of AR & MR technology.”

More information is available on the Cinedigm and Nreal websites. 

LOS ANGELES—The streaming services provider Cinedigm has announced that it has reached an agreement to acquire Digital Media Rights (DMR), a diversified specialty streaming, advertising, and content distribution company that was founded more than a decade ago by media industry veterans Michael Hong and David Chu. 

DMR is global distributor of feature films and television series for the streaming ecosystem, with more than 7,500 titles under distribution and it has 10 channels focused on enthusiast audiences, six of which are free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channels and/or video-on-demand apps (all apps have ad-supported VOD and premium, subscription VOD options). 

Those include AsianCrush (asiancrush.com), Midnight Pulp (midnightpulp.com), RetroCrush (retrocrush.tv), Cinehouse (www.cinehousetv.com), Cocoro (cocoro.tv), and KMTV (kmtvnow.com). 

DMR also curates social video channels and operates an ad network and marketplace garnering more than 100 million connected TV impressions a month against long-form, premium movies and television shows.  

Upon completion of the deal, Cinedigm will increase its library to more than 46,000 hours of premium film and television content, with an estimated 40+ million monthly viewers, 18.5 million social subscribers, 4 billion views, and 13 billion minutes viewed annually, Cinedigm said. 

With the addition of the seven new owned, proprietary channels, the company will have 15 wholly-owned streaming services, which now comprises more than 50% of its 28 channels in operation. 

“DMR’s top-notch management team, high-quality channels and film & TV library perfectly complement our own strengths and our mission of serving enthusiast audiences,” said Chris McGurk, chairman and CEO at Cinedigm. “When you consider the other key additive components from this deal, including the global reach of DMR’s expansive social media efforts, we are well-positioned to not only reach a rapidly growing new audience in the short-term but also to expand the scale of a larger Cinedigm umbrella channel strategy in the long run. We expect this acquisition to be immediately accretive, and the leverage of Cinedigm’s technological efficiencies and expansive portfolio of assets will spur significant additional growth.”

"The strong synergy between Cinedigm and DMR is readily apparent, and by working together, we can continue to deliver and further scale our top-notch, curated streaming channels to our audiences in a way that builds a true sense of community. The team at DMR is proud to have built an impressive lineup of channels and offer content that can meet the rising demands of audiences around the world, including fans of incredibly popular Korean dramas, Japanese anime, and Chinese TV, as well as arthouse, romance and horror movies,” said David Chu, co-founder and CEO of DMR. “It's why we're thrilled to align with this key industry player and are looking forward to a future with even more expansion opportunities."

LOS ANGELES—The independent streaming company Cinedigm has announced that it is working with LiveLike to deliver new community and gamification elements to Cinedigm’s portfolio of premium streaming direct-to-consumer subscription services. 

LiveLike is an audience engagement platform that offers a suite of tools to make content more interactive and social with influencer-driven chats, watch parties, loyalty rewards, user rankings, and other features.   

“As we continue to refine and innovate on what we feel is the ideal user experience for consumers of our streaming services, we are excited to partner with LikeLive who will add a whole suite of additional fan engagement features to our streaming channels,” said Cinedigm chief technology and product officer Tony Huidor.  “LikeLive’s platform offers some very compelling engagement capabilities as we look to launch the next major version of our proprietary Matchpoint Blueprint development framework with plans for much deeper fan engagement such as integrated user rankings, loyalty points, digital NFT collectibles and more.”  

The Matchpoint Blueprint platform powered the recent launch of Cinedigm’s Fandor and Screambox streaming services, Cinedigm said. Now, the companies plan to directly integrate such LiveLike SDK features as chat, profiles, rewards, leaderboards, and badges into the underlying Matchpoint Blueprint platform to make the streaming services more interactive. 

LiveLike Co-founder and CEO Miheer Walavakar noted that “Cinedigm has done a tremendous job cultivating a community of passionate film lovers, and continuing to innovate and update the streaming service. Through our partnership, we have been actively collaborating on ways to super-serve these fans, encouraging them to connect with each other and engage with this content in fun, new ways.”  

In the last two years, LiveLike has worked with such companies and organizations as Canal+, Deltatre, FloSports, FOX, nugs.net, Sky Group, Sportradar, WarnerMedia, LaLiga, NASCAR, the Golden State Warriors, the NBA, and the WNBA. 

LOS ANGELES—Cinedigm has announced that it will be working with artificial intelligence-based startup Papercup to adapt the iconic Bob Ross series “The Joy of Painting” for millions of additional viewers worldwide by dubbing the painting show into Latin American Spanish and other key languages. 

Cinedigm, which is the exclusive distributor of The Bob Ross Channel for OTT platforms, intends to roll out the channel in the US and Latin America followed by other international territories. 

To localize the content, Cinedigm selected AI voice startup Papercup. 

Papercup was able to provide a scalable service to automate time-consuming parts of the dubbing process through the use of machine translation and synthetic speech that has been extensively trained via machine-learning, the companies said. 

This process outputs a fully localized audio language track that utilizes a synthetic voice imperceptible from a human voice. 

The Company plans to dub all 31 seasons of The Joy of Painting content into Latin American Spanish for distribution across the burgeoning Spanish-language streaming market.

Tony Huidor, chief technology and product officer at Cinedigm explained that the “Bob Ross Channel is one of our most successful channels due to its broad appeal and the magic that Bob Ross’ talent and innovation brought to the screen. In partnering with Papercup, we are harnessing an innovative technology partner to extend the reach of The Joy of Painting by utilizing cutting-edge technology to seamlessly dub his voice using artificial intelligence and synthetic speech. As streaming services continue to expand worldwide, this will allow us to reach a previously untapped global audience. This is a pivotal time for the entertainment industry as demand for streaming content adapted for local markets continues to grow. We seek to make the most of our channel portfolio by adapting our content for international markets. Partnering with Papercup will allow us to achieve this goal and scale our business by utilizing their AI technology."

“A project like this is exactly why we built our technology - unlocking hundreds of hours of quality content stuck in a single language with our speech translation system,” added Jesse Shemen, CEO and co-founder at Papercup. “It's validating to see our technology work at such a large scale across multiple languages and enable the introduction of strong branded content to a new global audience.”

A sample of the localization can be viewed here.  

LOS ANGELES—Cinedigm has announced that it finalized the acquisition of FoundationTV and has created a new Indian-based division Cinedigm India. 

Cinedigm also noted that it has integrated FoundationTV’s underlying technology portfolio with the Matchpoint digital distribution platform along with their software engineering teams into Cinedigm India. 

The new division will serve as the Company’s engineering, research and development hub focused on next-generation video streaming technology and emerging technologies. As part of the acquisition, FoundationTV’s engineering team will join Cinedigm and will be responsible for further developing the combined platform’s capabilities.

The Cinedigm India team will also begin developing a global “umbrella” service that will allow Cinedigm to showcase its portfolio of more than 20 streaming channels and more than 15,000 hours of AVOD, SVOD & TVOD video content, the company reported. 

The fully integrated platform will be used to expand the Company’s existing portfolio of streaming services while consolidating Cinedigm’s recent acquisitions like The Film Detective, Fandor and Screambox into one unified platform. 

“This deal marks the beginning of Cinedigm’s global expansion with the entrance into the world’s fastest growing streaming market,” said Erick Opeka, chief strategy officer and president of Cinedigm Networks. “Not only will we have a world-class engineering hub, we will also have an incredibly experienced team of professionals with deep, intrinsic market knowledge that will accelerate the growth of our streaming initiatives.”

NEW YORK—Cloud-based technology provider Amagi was the method of choice for Cinedigm to deliver its CONtv channel to the Twitch social video service, specifically using Amagi’s CloudPort cloud-based channel playout platform.

CONtv is a digital network billed as a devoted fan space, providing original programming and a digital catalog of film and TV titles. By using the CloudPort platform, CONtv is available as a 24/7 linear offering on Twitch.

With CloudPort, CONtv can stitch together a linear OTT channel in a few weeks, without having to use a separate custom-designed solution for periodic live events. CloudPort enabled Cinedigm to control the entire broadcast workflow—including playing live and library graphics, playlist scheduling or customized ad insertion—through a web user interface.

Amagi, which was founded in 2008, made its official U.S. debut in 2017.