Atlanta, GA and New York, NY, May 26, 2009
Dragonfruit Studios, a multi-platform entertainment studio and media company, announced today that it has selected Kaltura, Inc. (http://www.kaltura.com), developer of the first open source online video platform, to power www.apollospad.tv, the site of the web-based comedy series Apollo’s Pad it manages together with Galleon plc. Billed as ‘The Most Finest Night Club and Puppet Show on the Internet’, Apollo’s Pad is aimed at the young-male demographic with short, funny, satirical, and highly irreverent comedy episodes.
The Apollo’s Pad site leverages Kaltura’s dynamic video player, premium encoding for high quality video display and streaming, video distribution features, and Kaltura’s management console to upload and manage all of the show’s content.
“We conducted a rather thorough evaluation of a number of different options for a video management, presentation, and distribution platform. Kaltura rose to the top in every category of the evaluation – against serious competition,” said Melissa Honabach of Dragonfruit Studios. “As an emerging media, entertainment, and branded entertainment company, we look to Kaltura as a platform with which we can create and deliver a broad range of properties and programs and believe it to be a serious competitive advantage and point of differentiation.”
Dragonfruit Studios and Kaltura are already working on several additional online shows to be launched this year.
“There is an increasing amount of original high-quality content that is created especially to be broadcasted online,” said Ron Yekutiel, Kaltura Chairman and CEO. “Our open source platform allows content creators and publishers like Dragonfruit Studios to create custom video experiences for online viewers in the most flexible and cost-effective way. We are delighted to be working together, and are looking forward to our upcoming implementations with this great partner.”
About Dragonfruit Studios
Dragonfruit Studios was founded in 2008 by Michael Koziol and Melissa Honabach as a multi-platform entertainment studio and media company. The company currently has a number of entertainment projects at various stages of development. Additionally, Dragonfruit Studios has a joint venture relationship with Galleon Holdings plc – a London-based entertainment company. Under the relationship, Dragonfruit has full worldwide digital rights, including distribution, advertising, branded entertainment, and general exploitation for Apollo’s Pad; U.S. broadcast right for Apollo’s Pad; and U.S. broadcast and digital rights for Super Soccer Star.
About Apollo’s Pad
Apollo’s Pad is a multiplatform entertainment property aimed at the highly coveted yet elusive young male audience offering them unique, broadcast-quality comedy entertainment online and via mobile devices. The property features a series of webisodes set in the fictional Apollo’s Pad nightclub and a cast of characters modeled after different musical genres. The future plans for Apollo’s Pad involve more aggressive and broader distribution across global digital entertainment networks; brand integration with the property, characters, and music videos; and the growth of the Apollo’s Pad community. Apollo’s Pad was created by Galleon Holdings plc, which owns the intellectual property related to the property.
About Kaltura
Kaltura provides the world’s first Open Source Online Video Platform. With more than 25,000 active publishers, Kaltura’s flexible framework empowers any site with advanced video functionality. Founded in 2006, Kaltura’s open source code is available as a free Software Development Kit and as downloadable packages for leading platforms – such as Drupal, WordPress and MediaWiki. Kaltura also provides supplementary paid services including maintenance, support, integration, professional development, streaming and hosting, ad serving, content syndication, and aggregation of related third party services. Since its public launch, New York-based Kaltura has won numerous awards, such as Microsoft and TheMarker’s ‘Most Promising Start-up in Israel’ for 2009, TechCrunch40 People’s Choice award, Mashable’s ‘Open Web’ award, AlwaysOn’s top 250 global company and top 100 media company awards, and TV Week’s 5 Video Startups to Watch in 2009. For more information, visit www.kaltura.com.