VegaLaunch

VegaLaunch makes Vega OS channel creation simple for filmmakers, creatives, and other content distributors.

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Inspiration

For filmmakers and content creators of all kinds, acquiring streaming distribution is one of the most sought-after and complex parts of managing a media catalog. Third-party platforms create friction between creatives and their audience. VegaLaunch makes creating a channel for Vega OS easier than it has ever been.

Our team pairs both sides of that problem. One of us comes from media distribution and knows how hard it is for a creator to get a catalog in front of an audience. The other handles engineering. VegaLaunch exists so that a creator never has to learn the Vega development toolchain just to have a channel of their own.

What it does

VegaLaunch is a web platform that makes designing Vega OS channels as easy as any other GUI creators already know from across the web. Whether they are distributing video, audio, or other media, they work in a browser, not a development environment.

A creator adds media to their library, designs the channel page by page, checks it in an interactive TV preview, and exports a native Vega OS app that they own. Advanced users can also generate the Vega source behind their channel and take it from there.

Design

We designed for two audiences: the creator building the channel, and the viewer watching it on a television.

For the creator, the Studio breaks the work into a Library, a Channel editor, and Export. In the Channel editor a creator builds pages (our demo channel has Featured, Series, Film, Books, and Music), adds and reorders sections, and sets the channel's appearance. An interactive 16:9 TV preview with a virtual remote lets them navigate their draft with arrow keys, select, and back, so they see the ten-foot experience before anything is built.

For the viewer, the exported channel is a native Vega OS app navigated entirely by remote control, with adaptive video playback.

How we built it

JFin handled the frontend and backend buildout and codebase management, making sure all the technical boxes were checked for our project application. Michael led branding, creative strategy, and the UX and design of the platform and its media input process.

The creator-facing Studio, backend APIs, and Vega application generator are built with Node.js, TypeScript, React, and Vite. PostgreSQL and Google OAuth handle creator accounts, authentication, channel configuration, and persistent state. Hls.js supports adaptive video playback inside the application runtime.

When a creator exports, a hosted build worker on a separate Linux server generates a creator-specific Vega app from shared React Native templates and packages it as a VPKG.

Vega OS and Fire TV Integration

The export pipeline is built on the Vega toolchain:

  • Vega SDK, Vega CLI, and React Native for Vega generate, compile, and package native applications into VPKG files.
  • Vega Package Tool (VPT) validates the generated packages.
  • Vega VirtualDevice is where we install exported apps and test remote navigation, media playback, audio, pause, seek, and application restart.

AWS Builder Mini Challenge

Creator-uploaded video runs through a set of AWS services:

  • AWS Elemental MediaConvert transcodes uploads into adaptive HLS streams suited to television playback.
  • Amazon S3 and CloudFront provide private media storage and controlled content delivery.
  • Amazon SQS and EventBridge coordinate the processing jobs and asynchronous media workflows.
  • AWS SDK for JavaScript connects media processing, storage, and job management to our TypeScript backend.

Challenges we ran into

The hardest part was never our application logic. It was integrating, diagnosing, and validating the complete native application lifecycle.

Getting from a generated application to a validated, installable VPKG meant working through SDK-generated manifest changes, build-number validation issues, and native build failures that spanned several layers of tooling. Setting up a reproducible build environment on a separate Linux server added its own work: pinned tool versions, dependencies, resource limits, and build isolation.

Playback was another hurdle. An Hls.js timer-handle compatibility issue stopped video fragments from completing even though the media URLs were reachable. We had to inspect native playback behavior and adjust our integration to resolve it. On the AWS side, combining IAM permissions, MediaConvert, S3, CloudFront, and asynchronous processing into one secure workflow took substantial configuration and testing.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We generated a creator-specific VPKG through our hosted build worker, downloaded it from the Studio, installed it independently on the Vega VirtualDevice, and verified video playback and remote controls. The channel in our demo is built from our own catalog of films and episodes, not placeholder content.

What we learned

The path from a hello-world Vega app to a reliable end-to-end build environment takes far more engineering than the first step suggests. That gap is exactly what VegaLaunch is meant to close. The same technical barriers we worked through are the ones creators would otherwise face on their own.

Potential Impact

Independent filmmakers and creators with a catalog and an audience face the same problem: distribution that runs through someone else's platform. VegaLaunch gives them a way to publish to Vega OS as their own branded channel, built in an interface they already understand, with the app and its source code in their hands. That scales beyond any one creator or genre, because the need is the same for anyone distributing video, audio, or other media to the living room.

What we built during the hackathon

VegaLaunch was built from scratch for this hackathon: the Studio, the media pipeline, and the Vega app generator.

What's next for VegaLaunch

Our next step is integration into our marketing platform.

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