If you were launching a new service would you give it a name that sounds the same as a company already established in your chosen sector? Imagine launching a mobile phone company called ‘TeeMo Bile’ or a record label called Ee Em Eye. It’d be madness, right?

Well, a new player in the online video space has just launched in beta with a name remarkably similar to existing video service Qik. It’s a good job Quick.tv is doing something new.

I first heard about this new service when I stumbled upon their site a few weeks ago. At the time it didn’t give much away as to what Quick.tv would actually do but I signed up for information all the same. Always good to keep an eye on new startups, eh?

Last week Quick.tv finally launched in beta and I had a chance to try it out. It turns out the idea is that the service transforms your everyday run-of-the-mill videos into ‘Interactives’. Now you can quickly and easily add elements like text, image overlays, RSS feeds, chapter markers and multiple-choice surveys to your videos.

While it’s been possible to add these things to videos in the past, Quick.tv makes the tools to do so easily and, er, quickly accessible to anyone who wants them for the first time.

So, how does it fare? Well it appears the service has probably launched a little early. The tools in its Flash-based interface aren’t fully formed. I was looking forward to adding a survey to a video but as of yet, that just doesn’t work. The support documents aren’t online yet and the only help video so far shows you how to upload your videos ready for modification.

The good news is that the results from the tools that are available are promising. I shot a short video on my mobile phone. After uploading to Quick.tv I had added a text caption and a scrolling ticker of the 14sandwiches RSS Feed to it in less than a minute.

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to embed properly into 14sandwiches (which is powered by Wordpress) so I’ve embedded it on a separate HTML page. So, take a look at at my Quick.tv test video here.

Just like the other new service I’ve featured recently, AudioBoo, Quick.tv is a work in progress. In addition to some tools not working, the service really needs some sort of implementation of Key Frames so users can make elements appear and disappear at different points in the video.

It’s worth remembering that having all this power at your fingertips in a simple and quick web interface is quite simply amazing and something that wasn’t possible not too long ago. Once it all works properly and the proper help documents are in place it will be a useful tool for anyone wanting to add something extra to their web video.

I’ll return to Quick.tv as soon as it’s fully operational.