UK start-up signs online video deal with EMI

IchooseTV - a UK website offering streamed videos - has signed a deal with EMI to get access to its catalogue of music videos.

The agreement is the company's first major equity content partnership and is expected to be followed by similar deals in the run up to the official launch of the site in February. Visitors to the site will be able to watch videos by artists such as Robbie Williams and the Spice Girls for free, with the service gaining revenues through advertising. IchooseTV chief executive, Adrian Workman, is confident that streaming video to home users won't present any problems. "Even with a 56k modem dial up, you're going to get it at reasonable quality," he said However, Peter Kumik, VP business development and marketing for Sealed Media, who provides copyright control for valuable content, is unsure of the viability of IchooseTV's proposition. "It's a bit premature," said Kumik. "It's going to be at least 2002 until a serious move to online video [to home users] will happen." Mat Hanrahan, analyst at Bloor Research, agreed. He said: "I can't see that music video over the internet is going to be of much use to home users until the broadband issue is sorted." Similar sites established in the US, including DenTV and pseudo.com have collapsed. But IchooseTV's Adrian Workman claims that these companies ploughed heavy investment into proprietary programming - a path that ichooseTV will not be following.