About Shedballad
Shedballad is a media infrastructure company, based in Saudi Arabia. It produces and restores work, packages and broadcasts it, and serves it to viewers — three layers run by one team, with no outside provider standing between them.
Why
Why Shedballad exists
The regional solutions available today are outsourced, wholly or in part. Everyone is a consumer, and nobody is investing in infrastructure of their own.
So Shedballad built its own, entirely inside the Kingdom: Arabic from the ground up, decided locally, with data that does not leave, operating cost held at its floor, and ready for what is coming in the region's media — archives to restore, channels to run, and platforms to stand on top of it.
From master to screen
Studio
Produces a work, or restores one, and finishes its master.
Engine
Ingests that master under a permanent identifier, then packages and delivers it.
Platform
Serves it to viewers, free and worldwide.
Each layer sells to its own customers. Together they take a work from camera or reel to viewer without a step handed to anyone else.
Studio
Production and restoration
Original work owned outright, and the region's classics remastered.
- Original productionOwned work, streamed and licensed
- Restoration and masteringRights holders and institutions
- Content licensingOther services and broadcasters
Owning the work is the point: a commissioned restoration waits on someone else's rights and someone else's budget, while an original can be streamed, licensed and kept outright. The first of them is Concord — Arabic science fiction set in 2126, with a published novel and a documented world.
Restoration works from the original source rather than the copies in circulation, entirely on studio hardware, and the source never leaves the region. In audio: repairing the waveform and clearing the artefacts of old carriers, and re-syncing where a dub print diverges from the picture — the Arabic dub is preserved as an authentic track exactly as first recorded, never re-voiced or trimmed. In picture: upscaling with models tuned per work, and subtitles in three languages checked line by line.
Engine
Packaging, broadcast and delivery
The infrastructure the other two layers run on, licensed to anyone who has to serve video themselves.
- Transcoding and liveBroadcasters and channel operators
- Archival storageArchives, ministries and public bodies
- Data residencyAnyone under an obligation about where data sits
- Low-latency deliveryLive and on-demand alike
On demand: a master enters a vault with a custody record, is transcoded once into every rung of quality, and is published as immutable renders — so one version is never silently swapped for another — then distributed over a delivery network on links carrying short-lived tickets, so a copied URL stops working rather than spreading.
Live: a shuttle takes the camera's signal and pushes it to the origin, the origin segments it moment by moment, and it reaches the screen in about two seconds — over the same delivery network the on-demand side uses.
Platform
Serving the audience
A free, Arabic-first service, and the same product deployed for others under their own brand.
- StreamingViewers, free of charge
- White-label deploymentsOperators running a service of their own
Recorded content and live channels in three languages, behind one interface on television, phone and browser. Served worldwide with no regional blocking, with subtitles in Arabic, English and Japanese.
Shedballad is Saudi slang for a car exactly as it left the factory.
The numbers
Measured, not described
- 24/7
- A live channel running without interruption
- ~2s
- Camera to screen, live
- 4K
- Delivery resolution of a restored master
- 3
- Languages across interface, content and subtitles
- 2
- Complete operating environments
- 100%
- Of the infrastructure written as reviewable code
Regulatory position
- Hosting and processing inside the Kingdom, in Dammam.
- Built against the requirements of the Personal Data Protection Law.
- An archive stays its owner's, in open formats they can take with them whenever they choose.
How the money works
Every line above is sold except one. Streaming is free, and nothing in the library sits behind a paywall.
Some viewers contribute voluntarily, and that is real income. It buys nothing: no work unlocked, no limit lifted, no early access. Standing on the supporters' list follows how long someone has given and how much they take part, never the amount.
Where to start
Start small: one work from your archive, restored and delivered, or one channel run. A bounded trial that shows the result before any commitment.
Contact
Viewers, and rights holders, archives, broadcasters and operators alike — the same ways in.