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VHX API — Build your own custom OTT network (like Netflix)
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mountainmatt
Very cool. How would you say you compare to a service like Plex?
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Hunter
@mountainmatt Plex is much more consumer-oriented (deliver me my own personal video library). VHX is geared toward a content creator who wants to easily control the whole tech stack needed for delivering video to consumers. So (for example), a YouTuber who wants to build/own their own site (maybe because they want to offer paid content, etc) could power all the video with the VHX API without relying on a bunch of expensive resources to build it from scratch (or cobble together a bunch of other existing APIs). Make sense?
Hey there! Kevin here - CTO @ VHX. We're really psyched to see what people build with this / think of it. There is a big trend in media companies launching their own streaming service (ala HBO NOW) and this is traditionally a very expensive and hard investment. Lowering the barrier of entry and time to market should open up lot's of more content verticals for us consumers. AMA about the API!
Hunter
@ksheurs super rad. Maybe you can shed some light on what's different about the VHX API vs. other more traditional video APIs (like Brightcove, Ooyala, etc)?
@ckurdziel The key difference is VHX is built for "premium access" to video and being a native end-to-end solution for OTT/SVOD. Brightcove, Ooyala, JW Player (or even a private Youtube video) can get you a video player on screen, but that's just a portion of the problems to be solved when running an online streaming video business. VHX not only can power the video portion, but it controls access to and ties the video experience to the particular viewing subscriber/customer. This gives those running a streaming service the analytics they need to understand how their business is performing, what their customers are watching, and on what devices that customer is watching. Being built from the ground up to solve these problems enables VHX to offer a full stack solution vs having to work backwards and farm out agency work / cobble together many services.
@ckurdziel yea we made a simple demo demonstrating what you can do - http://www.wintergarten.io/. The source for this is in our Github (https://github.com/vhx/vhx-node-...) and we'll also be releasing code examples for Ruby, PHP, Go, Python.
@ksheurs Hi Kevin! Super interesting. Few questions ... would you guys be able to deploy to a last mile delivery method of my choosing (assuming you are serving from Cloudfront) ... if I want to be a bit closer to the metal with the CDN side of things (say I'm a regional telco in an emerging market) - is that something you guys can accommodate?
On the same note - would you be able to work with something like Gravitational to deploy the whole thing into a private environment?
This is cool. Adding this to my API bank for a random mashup in the future. Nice work!
Thanks for putting this out --- making it easier for us to take things to the next level