Channel 4 is in talks with the billionaire entrepreneurs behind Skype and Kazaa to supply content to the pair's internet television venture.

Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström made an estimated $2.5 billion (£1.3 billion) from the sale of Skype, the internet telephony service, to eBay last year. They are expected to unveil their eagerly awaited internet TV service, being developed under the codename Project Venice, next year.

Channel 4 said today that it was in talks with the Project Venice team to supply content via its 4oD service, which is available on some broadband platforms and allows viewers to watch recently aired programs on a pay-per-view basis and access archive material.

A spokesperson for the channel said: "These days consumers want to be able to watch what they want, when they want. We're aiming to make Channel 4's content available on as many platforms as possible."

The news comes as Mr Friis and Mr Zennström begin to promote their venture in internet television.

They said on the Project Venice website: "We're working on a project that combines the best things about television with the social power of the internet — a project that gives viewers, advertisers and content owners more choice, control and creativity than ever before."

Mr Friis, who divides his time working for eBay and on the Venice Project, has also outlined the plans for Project Venice on his blog. "Venice is still in limited beta, and God knows there are a lot of bugs to be ironed out and plenty of missing features. But we feel now is the time to start telling a bit about it," he wrote recently.

He said of conventional TV: "[People] hate the linearness, the lack of choice, the lack of basic things like being able to search. And wholly missing is everything that we are now accustomed to from the internet: tagging, recommendations, choice and so on ... TV is 507 channels and nothing on and we want to help change that."

In common with Kazaa, the music-sharing system that Mr Friis claims is the most-downloaded software in history, Project Venice will be a peer-to-peer platform.

That means that users will download content from one another's PCs, rather than from a central server.

A key challenge will be agreeing deals with content owners over how copyright will be protected on the Project Venice system.

Kazaa fell foul of record labels across the world, which alleged that it was "an engine of copyright piracy to a degree of magnitude never before seen".

Project Venice will also face fierce competition from internet television incumbents such as YouTube, bought this year by Google for $1.65 billion, and the recently unveiled BT Vision.

In an interview with the Danish press this year he said that the service would give free access to quality TV programmes to consumers who have a broadband internet connection. In an interview with the Financial Times, he noted that the service would offer pictures of a quality approaching that of high-definition television.

The project plans to earn money through revenue-sharing agreements with content producers. It is not known whether Skype has any content deals in place.

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