aioTV, the Colorado-based maker of personalization, curation, metadata and guide products for OTT providers and MVPDs, said it has notched a multi-year technology use deal with Arris.

They didn’t detail the financial terms or much else about how they’ll work together, but some of aioTV’s recent handiwork includes Composer, a curation and personalization engine designed to ingest and normalize metadata and enable the surfacing of Web and other OTT content onto an MVPD’s user interface.  aioTV had been working with Cox Communiations on a pair of curated OTT video offerings --  FlareKids and MeTV – that have since been discontinued. 

aioTV also has some intellectual property that could be useful for Arris. In January, aioTV scored a patent describing a method for merging and unifying traditional linear channels with OTT-delivered channels. 

aioTV has taken the wraps off Composer, a curation and personalization engine that ingests and normalizes metadata and will be targeted to a wide range of pay TV platforms.

Noting that existing curation tools are often manual and repetitive, Denver-based aioTV said its more automated Composer system, which is a combination of a recommendation and personalization einge,  is delivered via a user interface and a set of APIs that enables integration “in a matter of days.”

aioTV said Composer is designed to surfaces the  content into the MVPD’s user interface, including relevant Web and over-the-top content. The MVPD, it added, retains control of the ability to ingest metadata from traditional or web sources and then normalize, edit and manage it for its own platform.

“We find that human curation, mixed with our auto curation and personalization allows operators to delight customers, find efficiencies within their curation teams and enhance their content monetization strategies, all from one easy to use tool, Mike Earle, CEO of aioTV, said in a statement.

Earle said aioTV doesn’t have any customers to announce yet for the Composer, but said three tier one MVPDs around the globe are validating it ahead of anticipated deployments. He ntoed that the product is designed to plug into existing platforms, meaning there’s no other suppliers to “displace” by adding it.

Of recent note, aioTV had been working with Cox on a pair of curated OTT video offerings --  FlareKids and MeTV – that were recently discontinued.

aioTV, a Denver-based maker of video software and HDMI “pass-through” boxes, said it has scored a patent for metadata normalization and video playback, elements that can help MVPDs and other providers offer a blend of linear, on-demand and OTT video.

The patent (U.S. No. 9,027,065) describes a “Method and system for creating video channels for delivery of content from multiple platforms,” was filed on March 18, 2014, and issued on May 5, 2015. 

“The system includes a package generation module by which a service provider may define a package of both traditional and OTT channels to offer to subscribers in a unified programming interface,” the patent filing notes. “When a user uses the interface to select a set of video channels, the system compiles the set of the video channels in a subscriber package of both television and OTT channels.”

According to Mike Earle, aioTV’s CEO, MVPDs are struggling with the massive amount of metadata coming at them from an increasing number of sources.

“This patent and the associated methods in our metadata normalization engine are key to solving an industry wide problem that has immediate attention on it all the way to the C suites in these companies,” he said.

Last fall, aioTV and Midcontinent Communications  announced they were working on a “strategic project” that will enable the MSO to pair traditional live TV services with a new UI that will also support over-the-top video applications and services. Under that plan, Midcontinent will link legacy,  QAM-only set-tops (many from U.K.-based supplier Pace plc) to aioTV’s Android-powered, IP-connected “PassBox” via an HDMI cable.