Cox Joins Online Video Aggregation Race With Flare MeTV

Cox Communications is preparing its own take on the "not traditional TV" online video service with the debut of a service called Flare.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Cox on Friday will officially debut Flare on Friday and while there aren't a lot of details, the service appears to be similar to Comcast's Watchable and Verizon's Go90.

Flare MeTV will initially be available only for iPad and feature a Flipboard-like interface that lets users search online videos based on genre. There are no ads and no upcoming plans to include traditional television content. The service will be available across the Cox footprint, save for Texas, which Cox spokesman Todd Smith told the WSJ said has "legal and operational" issues.

In 2013, Cox briefly offered a Flare TV service to customers in Orange County, Calif. That service offered 90 live TV channels (60 in HD) for $35 a month. But in that case, customers had to also purchase a $99 Fanhattan Fan TV set-top box. That service never moved past the limited beta test.

Cox Communications is the nation's sixth largest pay-TV operator, and in August it launched a kid-friendly internet video service called Flare Kids. That service aggregates and curates video for children.

In 2104, Cox launched its Flare Play video game subscription package, which offers a package of video game titles for a monthly flat fee.