Innovacorp, the Nova Scotia government’s innovation agency, will announce tomorrow a $1 million investment in aioTV, a revolutionary platform that allows access to a range of video channels on a handheld device or computer.

Greg Phipps, Innovacorp’s Director of Investment, today confirmed posts that appeared on a few tech websites in the U.S. last week outlining the investment.

AioTV (short for All-In-One Television) was the brainchild of Michael Earle, a native Haligonian who once worked for Eastlink and has since moved to Denver, Co. The company and its five founding partners -- Don Oram, Michael Dogan, Jamie Redman, Nicholas Oram, and Nathan Myles – are based in the Halifax region, and the company has established its office in Innovacorp’s Technology Innovation Centre in Dartmouth.

Phipps said that Innovacorp was drawn to the project because it offers a solution to the struggle for an audience between free video (such as YouTube), live linear TV (traditional networks) and video on demand (Netflix).

“Everybody is looking for a model that they can monetize and none of them (content providers) offers all three,” said Phipps. “AioTV is the first we’ve found to offer one platform that accommodates all these streams and resembles a TV. We think it’s a hot, hot space.”

He added that tech giants like Apple and Google are interested in developing TV products and broadband providers are trying to figure out the formula for offering and monetizing a complete suite of video products. AioTV could appeal to all of them.

The company already offers its service for Apple iPads, PCs and Macs, and will soon extend its capability to include Android and Google TV.

It has also cut a deal with Mexico's Maxcom Telecomunicaciones to use aioTV’s platform to combine cable TV channels, video on demand and Internet content into its Yuzu service, which reaches more than 350,000 subscribers. Maxcom launched the service last month and charges an $11 per month premium to use it.

Phipps, a former investment manager with Business Development Bank of Canada, got to know Earle when both Innovacorp and BDC invested in the entrepreneur’s previous venture - Halifax-based V1 Labs. That company did not succeed, but Phipps grew to respect Earle as an entrepreneur and says his new venture offers remarkable potential. In backing Earle again, Phipps and his colleagues are adhering to a school of thought in the VC world that says an entrepreneur with one or two failures will do better in the future and is easier to work with than someone who’s had nothing but success.  

Phipps said the $1 million funding is a seed round and aioTV will probably be looking to raise more money in the second or third quarters of 2012.