Kara Swisher chomps away on her previous writings about Hulu, the joint News Corp/NBC site set up to distribute video. Key points:

Let’s just say, it’s crowded and confusing out there, beyond the obvious news that consumers seem to like YouTube’s short user-generated videos and sampling all those tasty stolen clips from TV shows and movies. (Keep in mind, NBC pulled its channel off YouTube recently and still has no licensing deal with the Google-owned site.)

So how much premium content people are willing to consume in a legal setting–given all the restrictions and lack of ability to access and manipulate great content–is still unclear.

But it is a market major media companies need to wade into and fast, given another clear trend: most media will become digital in the next decade, desperately needing the much wider distribution only the Web can provide.

Enter Hulu, a venture that is approaching the market with a free, ad-supported browser product, offering premium video content, including TV shows, clips and a small handful of movies.

That whistling sound you hear is the air slowly coming out of the huge valuations placed on YouTube and the idea that its "first mover" advantage would trump all else. Great content wins out. Assuming that the networks can create great content (and a view of the current TV schedule makes that a bit of a stretch), then having that accessible in a high quality way, easily discovered way, is significantly better than a low res, jumpy clip on YouTube. The only question I have is how effectively people will be able to find Hulu stuff on Google search... ;)

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