A true union of TV, the Web

Whether Hulu can grow into a major force or not, it's already become a pretty cool place to hang out. Its technology is good enough that Veoh and other popular sites such as Fancast frequently embed Hulu shows on their pages. The contents are helpfully alphabetized on a master list, where you might find more than one hidden treasure (egad, the short-lived '70s western "Alias Smith and Jones"?). You can even search for shows that Hulu doesn't have, and the site will direct you to where you can find them. The sole glitch came when I tried to call up "SNL's" "Annuale" ad parody; a message apologetically informed me that the clip was unavailable, with no further explanation.

Overall, Hulu is a big improvement over rivals such as Joost, which requires you to download a player that plants itself on your desktop and keeps jabbing you in the ribs with annoying pop-ups and invitations to share content with your friends. When I was settling down to watch an episode of the old ABC drama "Twin Peaks" and tried to remove a Joost pop-up for a credit-card company, I instead got kicked immediately into a commercial for the same advertiser. Not fun.

True, most of the content available on sites such as Hulu can already be had elsewhere, such as the networks' websites. But Kilar, the website's chief, sees value in developing a department-store model for shows.

Also, he added, companies will actually pay premium rates to advertise on a service such as Hulu because the shows rely on a single sponsor, which reduces the dreadful ad clutter of network TV. And viewers also can't zap through the commercials, the way they can with TiVo or other DVRs.

Does all this mean that pretty soon we'll be ditching our flat-screens and watching "The Office" only on laptops?

Well, perhaps some of us will. But don't worry about that costly 36-inch electronic rectangle chewing up wall space in your living room. "The television set has a very healthy future," Kilar said. "I absolutely never see that going away."

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The Channel Island column runs every Monday in Calendar.

Contact Scott Collins at scott.collins @latimes.com