What do you want to watch online - and how do you want to watch it? That's been the nagging question we in the broadcasting business have been asking recently - and it is an even bigger puzzle for those who have poured big money into internet video, from Joost to Babelgum, from YouTube to Veoh.com.

Some believe it's all about low quality, edgy clips which you can graze on at your laptop - others see the internet as simply a way of delivering quality content in high definition to your plasma screen. Or perhaps you want to be able to click onscreen and get a wealth of information from the web about what you're watching? That's what blinkx, a company launching a new online video service, is betting can make it stand out from an increasingly desperate crowd.

Its BBTV application promises to take a ragbag of content, from news clips to documentaries to independent films, and present it to you online with blinkx's added ingredient - clickability. The idea is that you are watching a news item about monks in Tibet, you click and get the entire commentary on screen, use that to navigate to the section which interests you, and then click again to draw down all that rich information that the web can provide.

Now blinkx is an interesting company. It was born as a spin-off from the Cambridge search firm Autonomy and its main product is a video search engine which delivers superior results by examining the audio and picture content of clips as well as their titles. It floated on AIM last year, and when I met the Chief Executive Suranga Chandratillake in London this week he said it was on course to make revenues of between $6 and $8 million in its first six months as a public company. Though, of course, it is still loss-making, with around $1 million a month going out the door every month.

But isn't it too late for another video wannabe to enter this market? Joost, with its wealthy backers and plenty of content deals, appears to be struggling to convince viewers to come onboard. As far as I can see, the audience has decided that it wants either YouTube or mainstream television - and the likes of blinkx may fall through the gap in the middle.