The first instinct of the telcos is to bring in Hollywood movies and regular TV channels as their major content offering. Then they realise this does nothing to differentiate them from cable companies. And soon the same will be on offer on the Internet. How to be different? Get close to people, close to individual content producers out on the street and in the back bedroom.

There are plenty of IPTV ready channels out there — I mean the type that will end up on regular TV sets over the next three years. The multi-channel future can’t come soon enough for some of these guys.

Photoshop TV is one of them. They’re now into their 50th broadcast. Three guys with their Apple laptops exploring Photoshop techniques. This kind of stuff is invaluable for anybody doing imaging work.

Then there’s DL.TV (or Digital Life Television, that looks at all kinds of gadgets), technolotics (media, politics, etc from three Dublin students), and as they say on the telly, many, many more.

There are already thousands of small TV channels like these. Critical to their future success will be good aggregation and showcasing. I went over to Akimbo to see what is available there — Akimbo has accumulated 13,000 shows now.

It started out with the ambition of becoming the top IPTV aggregator and has some competition from Roo and of course Brightcove, who seem to be stuck between a strategy that will take them into the corporate TV market and one that will lead them to becoming a partner for the higher end of independent professional video (they work for example with MediaStorm.org and with Tribeca).

Roo seems to have suffered from the YouTube effect and it’s hovering now around the upload market. One big ticket contract they have is aggregating video shorts and movie trailers for Verizon’s entertainment portal and another is for Citysearch (which is a model for how countries can put together their city break tourism offer). Just got to mention Vodeo too, who I think are evolving nicely.

Sadly there is no search function on Akimbo — at least not one I could find. Top shows on Akimbo right now are Anime Network, Ripe TV (girls in bikinis), and the BBC. Ripe TV I could not believe but fully understand — girl TV presenters with few clothes on. On the other hand The History Channel and Discovery Channel are also up there. No sign yet of Photoshop TV.