Hulu is turning out to be one of the most wanton debutantes in recent digital M&A history. Determined to sell itself, the TV-heavy video subscription service is being shopped around by Morgan Stanley and Guggenheim Partners with a reported valuation of about $2 billion. Now, Bloomberg reports that Apple is among the interested parties, which already include Google, Yahoo and AT&T.

For the time being, game consoles are the undisputed king of the hill when it comes to providing over-the-top (OTT) video services to the living room. But within the next few years look for Internet capable TVs and Blu-ray disc players to supplant the aging Xbox360s and Playstation3s as the preeminent connected sources of IP content to the TV. In a new report from IMS Research, the company predicts that access to IP video content to the living room will accelerate rapidly as "all but the lowest-end" TVs and disc players will carry network capabilities. In terms of raw bandwidth, …

With its obvious likeness to broadcast TV, branded online video might appear to be primarily a consumer market game. But long before YouTube, some of the earliest and most lucrative video ventures online were driven by b2b models. Video Webcasting back in the early and mid 2000s was economically viable for some early players because big hardware and software companies appreciated the sheer economics of underwriting video programming that could run tens of thousands of dollars a pop. One company that has been generating scores of b2b video is Symantec. In early June the company released a pair of sci-fi …

It is hard for me to imagine a situation where a little John Cleese is not in order. Ex-Monty Pythoner Cleese was not only one of the driving forces of that troupe's best writing, but in the dozen or so episodes of Fawlty Towers, he and former wife Connie Booth created one of the high points of TV comedy. When Cleese sends his towering frame into managed chaos, when his splayed limbs belie his inner frantic state, there is simply nothing like him to behold. When his writing is on target, it layers absurdity onto absurdity at a merciless pace …

Go figure. The movie industry may actually get at least a piece of the digital model right in coming months. Sometime this fall, a consortium of studios is ready to launch the UltraViolet project that will allow people to buy hi-res physical discs that will include rights to access the same films from PC and multiple devices like smartphones and game consoles. According to Reuters, the plan is close to ready and should be part of your holiday Blu-ray purchases.

f you look at the usual demographics surrounding video viewing online, you would think much of the action is still going on in the under-55 set. After all, most of the Web celebs are young, edgy, and Web cam-comfortable. But in fact, millions within the older demographics are likely targets for online video, too, and they are just as capable of creating their own video stars. To wit, one Jeanne Robertson, a 67-year-old stand-up comedienne with a large YouTube following.

I have to admit I have a soft spot in my heart for otherwise dweeby and staid b2b categories getting a little funky and genuinely entertaining with their marketing efforts. Growing up as the son of an ad man, I got to see a ton of crappy creative and crushingly boring b2b campaigns. To this day I still recall the inventive promotions sent regularly by some paper company whose name I will never remember. The materials often had nothing to do with the paper industry. They simply were engaging, and they happened to be printed on and made possible by …

In addition to trying to demonstrate that the largest video destination on the planet isn't just about offbeat Web shows and cute cats, YouTube is also endeavoring to show that it isn't only streaming video either. As we covered earlier this week in Google's own Contraption puzzler promoting the Nexus S Android phone, the branded channels are getting increasingly interactive. Yesterday, Wonka Chocolate leveraged its roots in Roald Dahl's "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" to bring the Wonka Imagination Room to life. Claiming to be the first 360-degree interactive video experience, the branded channel on YouTube is a bit of …

Oh, how typical is this? The winner of Break Media's six-week contest soliciting the best script for a Web video short is about (wait for it) the Web itself. Twenty/thirty-somethings in white button-downs visiting one another's cubicles. Check! Mostly average males, one gorgeous woman. Check! Fan-boy reference to cult fantasy writer (in this case H.P. Lovecraft and his Cthulhu Mythos). Check! Oh, look at this latest Web thingie. Check!

Veteran PC puzzle gamers may recall a legendary digital time sink entitled "The Incredible Machine" back in the 1990s. This inspired game took its cues from the great Rube Goldberg cartoons earlier in the 20th Century, which mocked the new machine age of convenience and automation with bizarre, intricate contraptions built to perform the simplest of everyday tasks. "The Incredible Machine" brilliantly leveraged digital interactivity to let the player assemble ramps, pulleys, treadmills, engines, etc. to complete a job, usually of moving a ball from Point A to Point B. For the engineering set that dominated the early adopter generation …