Bill Gates once dreamed of having high-quality artwork -- from the "Mona Lisa" to Picasso's "Guernica" -- digitally delivered to video screens on the walls of homes, businesses and public spaces.

Although the Microsoft co-founder successfully deployed the revolving art concept at his Medina mansion nearly a decade ago, the idea has not caught on with the general public.

But now a new Seattle start-up called RGB Labs, which has raised $1 million in early-stage financing and signed partnership agreements with Corbis and other art houses, thinks the time is right to pick up on the billionaire's dream.

Founded by former Amazon.com and Avenue A technology executive Scott Lipsky, RGB Labs will introduce its GalleryPlayer delivery service today. About the size of a toaster, the GalleryPlayer allows high-resolution images from world-renowned artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Georgia O'Keeffe and Andy Warhol to be displayed on plasma and flat-panel television screens. It does that in a secure manner that Lipsky said would befuddle even the most skilled computer hacker.

The idea already has some art and technology lovers salivating.

"The quality of the raw content in terms of resolution is phenomenal," said Enrique Godreau, a Seattle venture capitalist who sits on the start-up's board. "It is pretty darn evocative when you look at the screen and you think of where this could go."

Seattle intellectual-property law firm Black Lowe & Graham installed the GalleryPlayer on a 60-inch plasma screen in its glass-walled conference room last week. So far, the digital artwork, from Renaissance paintings to 20th-century photography, has received rave reviews from lawyers and clients.

"We are loving it," network administrator Chris McKinlay said.

The King County Library, Martin Smith Inc. and an undisclosed Seattle resident also are using the GalleryPlayer, which was released last month.

For now, RGB is only targeting business customers: law firms, hospitals, hotels, retailers and other companies that can afford to dress up a conference room or a lobby with a digital artwork system that costs more $10,000, including the $195 per month service fee for four galleries of images.

But as the price of plasma screens falls (a 50-inch device currently sells for about $6,000) and the numbers increase (the market is expected to double next year, to 1.1 million), Lipsky is hopeful that RGB's technology will make it into consumer's living rooms.

In fact, Lipsky, 39, started on his current entrepreneurial quest after attempting to display digital art work at his residence in Seattle's Mount Baker neighborhood.

"I wanted the 'Mona Lisa' staring me in the face," he said.

A self-described technology geek who was handpicked by Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos as one of his company's first employees, Lipsky had no problem installing a 50-inch Pioneer Elite plasma screen above his fireplace. But he ran into problems finding museum-quality images from favorite artists such Yamagata, Van Gogh and Picasso.

"I started looking for content and couldn't find it," said Lipsky, who quit high school at 16 to start developing software. "That is when the idea struck me. I said let's research this and find out if no one is really building a box to play art, like there is a box to play movies or a box to play audio."

He couldn't find any direct competitors. So Lipsky formed RGB in January with Paul Brownlow, the former director of technology at Avenue A, and David Gabrieli, a lawyer who formerly served as director of licensing at Amazon.com.

RGB Labs will need plenty of legal assistance as it steps into the complex web of licensing digital content.

Seattle-based Corbis, a strategic partner that is supplying hundreds of high-resolution images to RGB Labs, has filed a number of lawsuits against Web sites for illegally displaying images. And the Recording Industry of America filed 261 lawsuits last month against people who participated in music-sharing services such as KaZaA.

With RGB Labs responsible for delivering artwork from masters such as Leonardo and Claude Monet over the Internet, Lipsky acknowledges that security is of paramount importance. Two of the company's 18 employees are lawyers. And Lipsky said the system was built from the ground up so it would not be "Napster-ized."

Mark Sherman, vice president of emerging markets and products at Corbis, said there are many challenges to delivering high-quality images to a flat screen. That's part of the reason why Corbis, founded by Bill Gates 14 years ago, has no intention of competing with RGB.

"We are sticking to our expertise, which is licensing content to our partners," Sherman said.

Another challenge is the cost. With corporations looking to cut expenses at every corner, a $10,000 digital art system might not be viewed as a must-have.

Lipsky doesn't see it that way. "Call a couple companies and ask them what they spend on corporate art. Call a couple retailers and ask what they spend on merchandising and environmental space," Lipsky said. "This is not a big number for them."

Lipsky -- who is planning on moving into a house that will have multiple flat-panel screens running the GalleryPlayer -- said people have been talking about viewing art in this manner for 10 years. Now, he thinks the timing is right.

"The reception has been tremendous in every direction," he said. "We showed this to hundreds of people and everyone just gets blown away. The challenge is you have to see it in order to understand it."