KEY POINTS:
The Americans finally have their equivalent of the BBC iPlayer online streaming service in Hulu.com, an internet TV platform backed by NBC Universal and News Corp.
Just like BBC iPlayer, which can only be viewed in the United Kingdom, Hulu is limited by territory and IP address, so you can only watch it in the US.
And like the BBC and TVNZ's On Demand service, it uses a video-streaming model.
You click on a TV show or movie you want to watch and a player window will open allowing you to use your broadband connection to stream the content in real-time. Most Americans have reasonably good cable or DSL broadband connections so the experience should hold up well.
Wall Street Journal tech commentator Walt Mossberg has had a look and is impressed by the technology, if not the depth of content available on Hulu.
Hulu has advertising, but not as much as you'll be subjected to on regular TV, says Mossberg: TV "Shows contain just 25 per cent of the commercial time that's on regular TV. And Hulu allows you, in some cases, to choose the advertisers whose commercials you see, or else to opt to watch a movie trailer at the start of a video in exchange for seeing no further ads during that viewing."
Reading the headlines coming out of the US about Hulu got me thinking about that other web venture that was expected to revolutionise how we watch TV - Joost.com.
I haven't opened my Joost client in months, I rarely find anything being shown on there worth repeat visits. It seems other people have been wondering the same thing about Joost, which may now have to follow the BBC/Hulu model with web streaming that doesn't require the browser download, just to keep up with the major broadcasters.
I think Joost still has a big future, especially if it partners with internet-enabled set-top box and games console owners to make the experience pretty seamless on a range of consumer electronics devices in the lounge. That's where the Joost client will offer a better experience than purely web-based streaming services.
Across the Tasman, broadcaster ABC is also ramping up its internet TV efforts with ABC Playback, which reportedly includes: "a 24/7 online streaming content website from a new continuous news centre by a specialist production team".
Sounds good. There will also be three channels of full-screen ABC TV and 60 new ABC Local websites and ABC Shop Downloads. But ABC plans to fund the digital push "from existing budgets" which sounds like the old new media trick of getting your existing crew of reporters and content producers to do more work in the same amount of time.
All of these services are the tip of a big iceberg that will ultimately deliver most of the content we consume via an internet connection. So what does that mean for media formats like the newly victorious Blu-ray?
Patchy broadband and the conveniences of being able to store and share discs will mean it will have a role to play for some time to come, but my fears about the death of HD-DVD leading to Blu-ray manufacturers bumping up prices, seems to have come about rather quickly.
That's pretty disappointing to see, though at least the success of the format will give other manufacturers the confidence to adopt it, which means there'll be more competition between consumer electronics players for the consumer dollar.
