ReadWriteWeb

This week there's been a fair bit of action in the Internet TV sector, with announcements from Hulu, Joost and TiVo. Our network blog last100 has been covering the action.

This week Hulu - the online video project from Newscorp and NBC/Universal, with participation by Sony, MGM and others (our previous coverage) - launched to the general public in the United States. It's been in private beta nearly five months, wrote Dan Langendorf at last100.

Prime Time Rewind is a new web site that allows you to watch network TV for free online by using their web site. The shows that are played are identical to what the networks release on their own web sites, the only difference is that Prime Time Rewind aggregates them together in a unique way.

If you haven't heard of longtime Flash developer Paul Yanez, there's a good chance you've likely seen some of his work over the past few months. Yanez creates web-based flash media players that interact with the Internet's top video sites, and many of them have been written up on top blogs like TechCrunch, Mashable, DownloadSquad, and NewTeeVee. His latest creation is an online media player for Hulu, which brings an Apple TV-esque experience to Hulu videos. Yanez has created a number of media players for various online video and image sharing properties which bring desktop-like functionality to browsing and playing files on those networks. But he has loftier aspirations for his project.

Part of Hulu's strategy is to not only be a destination, but also a hub for the distribution of content from NBC Universal and News Corp. They do this in two ways: 1. by letting ordinary users embed clips elsewhere on the web, and 2. by partnering with major media sites to deliver commercial content. The result is that consumers have a number of choices for where they can view the content on Hulu.com. We'll take a look at a handful of Hulu-powered sites below, including Hulu itself.

The folks over at Hulu have made 2500 invites available for the closed beta of the Hulu service for ReadWriteWeb readers.

Hulu is a joint venture between News Corp. and NBC Universal that puts popular television content from those companies online. It's ad supported (via pre and mid-roll ads) and the videos are quite high quality. Popular shows include 24, The Simpsons, Family Guy, 30 Rock, The Office, House, and my favorite, Psych.