Gerry Butler told the Irish Independent he expects discussions with movie studios to be completed early in the summer.

The video-on-demand service has been under consideration since last year, but it has just been confirmed by Butler that it will now proceed.

He said that he expects discussions with movie studios to take place and conclude this summer.

He said that the group were also hoping to buy the exclusive rights to movies which would cover them for TV, rental and digital transmission.

Once the service is up and running, they are hoping thousands of titles will be available online to users.

Xtra Vision currently has around 1.7 million customers.