R Warszawa is one of Poland’s major centres for the performing arts. Based in Warsaw, the institution seeks – in partnership with
other theatres and cultural institutions – to integrate residents and guests into the cultural life of Poland’s capital city. TR Warszawa tries to make its repertoire as widely accessible as possible, and some performances are in English or feature subtitles. In March 2020, when the pandemic hit Europe, TR Warszawa encountered the same cliff edge as every other performing arts space. The centre responded to production closures with an ambitious plan to stream its plays online, monetising the streams to support the business. In a matter of weeks, TR Warszawa needed to design and implement a VOD solution, so viewers could pay to watch content on their TVs and mobile devices. The resulting TR Online platform hosted over 50,000 participants in online events – including stage performances, workshops and meetings. The TR virtual stage enabled TR Warszawa not only to connect with existing customers, but also build new audiences in Poland and abroad – who otherwise wouldn’t have been exposed to its events. By the summer of 2020, TR Warszawa had partnered with Insys Video Technologies to help realise their vision of a theatre that could reach out to people in their homes. Insys VT provides a white-label OTT solution called Insys VOD, as well as services to help businesses boost their reach and bottom lines, by using video content in creative ways. Customers include local movie festivals, theatres, sports clubs and bigger content distributors, such as film companies and public TV broadcasters. Headquartered outside of Zürich, with a development and TR WARSZAWA RESPONDED WITH AN AMBITIOUS PLAN
SETTING THE STAGE Insys VT had been using AWS Elemental media tools for six years – and had made building cloud-based content solutions their bread and butter. AWS Lambda – a serverless, event-driven compute service, which allows users to run code without provisioning or managing servers – was the foundation of the system. It automatically triggers AWS Elemental MediaConvert to transcode video files into stream-ready formats. Video is also protected from piracy using DRM, client-side watermarking and location- based blocking.
R&D centre in Poznań, Poland, the company relies heavily on cloud tools provided by AWS Media Services to build its various solutions. Design of the new platform, dubbed TR Online, kicked off in September 2020, with a hard, the- show-must-go-on deadline of October 26. With input from the TR Warszawa team, Insys VT customised its white- label OTT solution for the theatre – and implemented the new streaming service in about four weeks. The platform’s offering also includes bonus content, such as live discussions and panels.
PERFECT MATCH TR Warszawa, Insys VT and AWS built TR Online together
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