Skype founder prepping Netflix rival

Skype cofounder Janus Friis is launching a new online video streaming service under the Vdio moniker.

US tech website gigaom.com broke the story and reports that Friis and some of his business associates have been working on the project for two years.

The Vdio website contains images of various TV series and movies and an invitation to register through Facebook.TV shows on the featured on the homepage include Sony-distributed Breaking Bad, Justified and The Tudors and Lionsgate-distributed Mad Men.

Movies featured on the holding page include Sony Pictures’ A Few Good Men and The Karate Kid.

The team working on the new service includes former TV Guide president Ian Aaron, who is CEO, and Justin Erenkrantz, who worked with Friis on Joost, the online video service that ceased operating as a consumer-facing service in 2008 and was sold to advertising firm Adconion a year later.

The vdio service is currently in ‘closed beta testing’ with a small group of users numbering in the low thousands and will, gigaom.com says, likely be a subscription based service placing it in direct competition with the likes of LoveFilm and, if launches in the US, Netflix. It will initially launch in the UK.