Your Library Is Already a Linear Channel. Your Platform Just Doesn't Know It Yet.

At a Glance

• Live and on-demand were designed as two products, with different tools, different metadata and different notions of "what is on right now". The gaps only meet on the viewer's screen, which is exactly where they show.
• At IBC2026, Aviion is previewing the next generation of its white-label OTT platform, built on a different assumption: live and on-demand are one thing, with one catalog, one branded storefront and one source of truth for whether a title is upcoming, live or ended.
• The centrepiece is a 24/7 Library Channel: a round-the-clock linear channel built entirely from videos already in the operator's library. No live encoder, no playout hardware, no control room.
• A single live-status source pushes one viewer-facing state to every screen within seconds, without a page refresh, so the storefront, the countdown and the play button always agree.
• Aviion will run guided previews at IBC2026, stand 1.D18 in Hall 1, walking visitors from curating a catalog through to running a premiere or a 24/7 library channel and watching the live state update across screens in real time.

Ask an OTT operator what it takes to add a linear channel to their service and you will usually hear the same list: a playout system, an encoder, a control room, someone to babysit the schedule, and a separate contract with a vendor who runs it. Then ask what happens when the storefront says "Live" and the stream hasn't started. Most will admit the same thing: a viewer pressed play on nothing, the countdown and the player disagreed, and someone on the team flipped a flag by hand to fix it.

Both problems come from the same root cause. Live and on-demand were designed as two products. They have different tools, different metadata, different notions of "what is on right now" and they meet only at the last possible moment, on the viewer's screen, where the gaps show.

At IBC2026, Aviion is previewing the next generation of its white-label OTT platform, built around a different assumption: live and on-demand are one thing. One catalog, one branded storefront, and one source of truth for whether a title is upcoming, live or ended.

Why launching OTT still takes five vendors

Most operators who go direct-to-consumer end up stitching together a streaming backend, a CMS, a FAST or linear channel system, an ad server and a payments provider. Five vendors, five contracts, five timelines. Editorial lives in one toolset and engineering in another. Viewer data ends up in five silos. Six to twelve months to launch is normal, and every additional capability, such as a linear channel, means another integration project.

Aviion's answer has been to build one platform where content, users, subscriptions, payments, analytics and distribution sit in one backoffice, used by both the streaming team and the editorial team. FAST channels, server-side and client-side ad insertion, and end-to-end media asset management are built in rather than bolted on. Onboarding a new operator is configuration, not development, which is how the platform can put a pilot with real content live in ten working days.

The IBC preview extends that same philosophy to linear television.

A 24/7 channel from the content you already own

The centrepiece of the preview is Aviion's 24/7 Library Channel. It lets an operator build a round-the-clock linear channel entirely from videos already in its library, programmed like a playlist and steered live while on air. No live encoder, no playout hardware and no control room.

Practically, this means a programmer can reorder the running order on the fly, skip or jump to any item in about two seconds, and pause and resume from the same point. A mandatory fallback loops automatically whenever the playlist is empty or paused, so the channel never goes to black, and the channel recovers on its own if a component restarts.

For a sports club, that is a club channel that runs match archives, interviews and highlights around the clock and switches to the live match when it starts. For a broadcaster, it is a themed channel spun up from the back catalog in an afternoon. For a production house or educator, it is a way to give an on-demand library the shape and stickiness of television without buying broadcast infrastructure.

The library channel is one of four broadcast forms Aviion supports, all reaching viewers through the same experience:

• Live channels fed by the operator's own encoder
• Live events fed by the operator's encoder
• Scheduled premieres of finished files, shown as live moments
• Library-driven 24/7 channels

Each of these historically came from a different system with its own idea of "now". In Aviion they share one model.

One live-status source, every screen, no refresh

Underneath all four forms is a single live-status source that reduces everything to one viewer-facing state: upcoming, live or ended. That state reaches every screen within seconds and without a page refresh. A title flips to "Live" for all viewers the moment it starts, and viewers cannot press play on something that is not actually broadcasting.

Because one source drives the state everywhere, the storefront, the countdown and the play button always agree. An operator never sets "live" by hand or hopes the schedule matches reality. This sounds small until you have handled the support tickets and the social media replies that come from getting it wrong on a big night.

For years, running a linear channel meant playout hardware and a control room, and "is it live yet?" was something storefronts routinely got wrong. We built Aviion to treat live and on-demand as one thing, so an operator can turn a library into a 24/7 channel, steer it on the fly, and every viewer sees the right state the moment it changes.

Built for operators who want to own the relationship

Every operator on Aviion gets full brand isolation: its own web address, storefront and catalog, never mixed with anyone else's. Editorial teams get curation tools for shelves, hero banners, artwork, multi-language descriptions, age ratings, per-country availability and scheduled publishing. Video is delivered as adaptive HLS and DASH to web, Android, iOS and Apple TV, Tizen and WebOS, with Chromecast and AirPlay casting, and protected with multi-DRM (Widevine, PlayReady and FairPlay) from a single encrypted copy.

Monetisation is the operator's choice: SVOD, AVOD and FAST in any mix, changeable at any time, with ads available as a second revenue line and integration with existing payment gateways such as Stripe, PayPal, Mollie and Revolut. Viewer data stays first-party and belongs to the operator, with GDPR and EEA consent handled in the platform.

Operators who have moved to their own service on Aviion report step changes in daily viewership, subscriptions and retention, largely because the brand, the catalog and the viewer relationship are finally in one place and under their control.

The question to bring to IBC

If your library is sitting in an on-demand catalog and linear television feels like a capital project you keep postponing, the question is no longer whether you can afford playout. It is whether your platform can treat the content you already own as a channel, and keep every viewer correctly informed about what is on right now.

The new Aviion modules are in pre-release. At IBC2026, Aviion will run guided previews at stand 1.D18 in Hall 1, walking visitors from curating a catalog through to running a premiere or a 24/7 library channel and watching the live state update across screens in real time.

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