The news comes as Hulu failed to renegotiate a deal for content from Comedy Central, owned by Viacom.

Hulu cast the departures as a wrenching loss for its viewers: “Our users have been extremely vocal and passionate about how much they love what the Comedy Central folks are doing.” The fun’s over on March 10.

In a Hulu blog post about Comedy Central that reads like a hail-Mary bit of negotiation, Hulu added: “We’ve driven steadily increasing revenue per view as advertisers voted with their budgets to take advantage of innovative ad formats and very strong advertising effectiveness.”

Comedy Central replied: “We had a great experience with Hulu, and we hope to work with its team again in the future.”

Hulu viewers were quick to pile on: “Let your corporate sponsors know that me and quite a few other people will be heading back to torrents due to this,” one guy groused.

The two late-night shows remain free on their own websites. But the video images are sharp and clear on Hulu, while the Comedy Central streams look soft, with oddly oversatured colors. The audio seems a bit better on Hulu as well.

“The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” debuted on Hulu in the summer of 2008. Hulu’s traffic began its dramatic gains about that time.

Erik Flannigan, executive vice president of digital media at MTV Networks, said at the time that the Hulu placement was a public service, given the creepy fact that something like 20 percent of young Americans said they got their political news from Stewart and his comic spawn.

Cablevision says the service allows customers to transfer anything (their italics) that displays on their PC monitors to that widescreen TV. “We are putting an end to the need for families to huddle around their laptops or PCs to watch content together,” Cablevision COO Tom Rutledge press-released.

“Anything” presumably includes iTunes video and Hulu’s trove of network TV fare, an improvement over current PC-TV link of choice Boxee.

A “simple” software download to the PC activates the link, with no hardware in sight. Handheld personal electronic devices that are running through the home network also can make their debut on the big screen, Cablevision says. Internet radio and applications for email and spreadsheets apparently will work as well.

The signal slings through the Cablevision network system and onto a dedicated (unused) TV channel, similar to how home video players work.

Anyone with a computer and a burning desire to watch “Smosh” and “Happy Tree Friends” on the idiot box already has figured out how to do this — but there’s something to be said for a solution that loses the boxes and wires.

Cablevision said its beta test of PC to TV Media Relay will get under way in June. Mac users should stand by for the usual techno-lag, as it’s PC only for now.

The move puts the retail giant on the cutting edge of the streaming video space, where it’ll compete with Amazon’s Video on Demand and the iTunes Store.

Wal-Mart also could choose to challenge Netflix, with its “free” Watch Instantly service, which comes with the standard snail-mail DVD rental packages.

Vudu streams its high definition content in 1080p, using the kind of state of the art equipment that few would associate with the Arkansas-based big boxer. Vudu’s customers can buy or rent the video titles.

The New York Times, which does a good job of tracking online video news, broke the Vudu story. Wal-mart pushed out a news release on the Vudu buy shortly thereafter.

Vudu’s on-demand service is built in high-definition TV sets and Blu-ray players from home electronics hardware makers such as Toshiba, Samsung, Sanyo, Sharp, Vizio and Mitsubishi.

BetaNews points out that Vudu is the only major streaming service to serve up adult content, via its deal with the AVN network. Wal-Mart, known for pulling CDs with dubious cover art, no doubt will take a hard look at that.

Update: Wal-Mart wasted no time in cleaning up the streets of Vudu. “After Dark” subscribers told told almost immediately that the adult movie services was being axed. The naughty vids were supposed to stop flowing within days, according to the email sent to the premium pervs.

The Vudu buyout, which had been anticipated, is expected to close in a few weeks, Wal-mart said. The price could be as high as $100 million, industry wags say — a ton of money for a small player in the relatively small online video industry. The asking price reportedly was $50 million.

Meanwhile, the Times reported that the iTunes Store is experimenting with renting network TV shows for 99 cents instead of the current $1.99 (for standard def).

And MediaMemo followed up on the move to monetize Hulu (at viewers’ expense) with speculation that its online video offerings could be available on the iPad only via subscription.

Meanwhile, Canadian broadcasters are boasting “every second of every competition” live on two web sites.

Computer stuck here in the U.S.? Hope you’re into curling. And hockey. Those sports dominate NBC’s live Olympics video offerings, with a dash of the higher-profile sports that we’ll see on TV.

Want those online scraps? You’ll have to prove to NBC that you’re a paying customer of their cable TV and satellite partners.

Otherwise, you’re in for 3-minute clips of events that already happened. Or the lame 2-minute “Defining Moments Montage” of the day’s action. Accompanied by preroll ads.

As of early Sunday, the highlights on the free video page were dominated by recaps of Friday’s opening ceremony.

Perhaps you’d like to stop by the athlete profiles section, with plenty of canned video.

The upside is the video images filtered through the Microsoft Silverlight platform are pretty good and clear, but we haven’t seen much in HD. You’ll have to download the latest version of Silverlight as the first step in accessing the live content.

As for verifying, be prepared to enter your password for your cable system or satellite provider’s web site. Don’t have one? You’ll be signing up for that, too.

(Give NBC some credit for its integration of Twitter, Facebook and wireless apps.)

NBC acknowledges that people who seek out live video become more involved with the Games and are more likely to watch the (mostly canned) TV broadcasts.

The problem seems to be the unauthorized sites and social video destinations that host pirated online feeds. No live feed online, no problem.

“Our aim is to make access to pirated material inconvenient, low quality and hard to find,” an NBC suit told Mediaweek. Another rep noted that viewers like “instant storytelling” and not the live action coverage that fans get in football, basketball, baseball — almost every sporting event.

Here’s a concept: Let the “instant storytelling” crowd get their soft-focus feel-good profiles on TV, while motivated sports fans can get their live fix online. That’s what multiplatform multimedia is all about, boys.

NBC has rights to the 2012 Games in London, so expect more of the same. The 2014 Games are up for grabs, with NBC up against ESPN/ABC and Time Warner/CBS. Comcast cable, the likely new owner of NBC Universal, might not be too thrilled with the prospects of another quarter-billion-dollar money loser, however.

That leaves the door open for ESPN, which presumably sees the value in doing right by the international community of sports fans.

The Worldwide Leader has the channels, the online chops and the intelligent love of sport that NBC lacks.

Most nanny filters turn out lame — blocking things like the name “Dick.” (Yep, saw that one ****’d elsewhere today.) YouTube passed the Dick test, so perhaps this censor system has some common sense.

“While no filter is 100% perfect, Safety Mode is another step in our ongoing desire to give you greater control over the content you see on the site,” the YouTube blog explained.

Let’s give it a test:

As the demo shows, using “naked” as a search term returns nothing but a red text notice (top right) that says results were deleted because of the protective feature. Searching for “violence” returns a filtered result, but presumably catching the rough stuff.

Our own Safety Mode-enabled search for “pussy” returned no results, but there were plenty of PG-13 Pussycat Dolls videos. “Asshole” produced an empty page. Going for the less obvious, “Felch” delivered the nasty without resistance. The video “Thanksgiving Felch” was an R-rated hoot; another video began with an adults-only warning. Better hope the kids keep to the classic four-letter words.

The Safety Mode opt-in is located bottom left of any YouTube page. To get the protection, just hit the link and then select a radio button. OK to go back in forth in a session.

If you’d like to leave Safety Mode on for future users with impressionable minds, log out and it can’t be changed on the browser until you log back in.

Comments with nasty language will have the specific words blocked out. Hopefully not Dick.

Other distributors announced as part of the Watch Instantly expansion into the indie arena include Gravitas Ventures, Music Box Films, Oscilloscope Laboratories and Regent Releasing.

“We’ve found that a large number of members enjoy the innovative, artist-driven nature of independent film,” press-released Robert Kyncl, vice president of content acquisition for Netflix.

Much of the Watch Instantly fare that’s classified as independent fare is of mixed value, a lot of aging B-movie crap. The new indie film deals are designed to bring in higher-quality films, such as “Au Revoir Les Enfants,” “Departures,” “As It Is in Heaven” and “A Nos Amours.”

Criterion’s online video service began more than a year ago, serving up titles such as “La Strada,” “Grey Gardens,” “Monterey Pop” and “M.” It’s not clear how many of those titles will be available via Netflix, since the Tiffany DVD label charges for those films on its site.

On Criterion’s “Online Cinematheque” site, the movies go for $5, but they’re renting for $3 on Vudu, another online video service that recently cut a deal with the DVD distributor.

Pretty much everything released by the Criterion Collection is worth watching and owning, but so far the streaming movies contain only a few of the label’s greatest films.

The re-do includes a dump of the useless 5-star rating system. Instead, it’s thumbs-up, thumbs-down.

Not many people like redesigns at first, but this one should be a crowd pleaser from day 1. The overall look and feel are cleaner, clutter cut as more information is collapsed, including the embed and URL strings for cut and paste.

Check out the YouTube resign — you can revert to the old-school version at the top of any page. Unfortunately, users can’t toggle back and forth yet, or set preferences.

The YouTube blog has this to say about the redesign:

“YouTube is about creating and watching the world’s biggest video collection; therefore, the design should make the video the star. To that end, the new look is more subdued, stripped down and simple than before. … We thought a lot about practicality here, choosing to expose only the most commonly used actions and language for you.”

The top right of the page is key here. It has less going on, with the ugly gray screen banished. There are fewer images in the space, meaning it doesn’t distract from the video, which is now unquestionably the dominant element on the page. (Sometimes it was hard to tell with so much crap on the right.)

The old top-right box is replaced by a collapsible search-results feature, more focused than the traditional Related Videos section, which remains lower right, but now unlabeled. There may or may not be an ad below between the two. Also, the Related Videos’ 1990s-style scroll is gone.

Response videos take a step back, going to a less prominent vertical format with smaller images — again, less distraction.

Facebook and Twitter get space below the video window, in the button bar that includes sharing, rating, saving and flagging options.

Searching while watching a video triggers another improvement. Instead of simply cutting off your current video, a smaller version of the window appears on the resulting page, slid to the far left. The search results are on the right — and you can return to the original watch page by a simple link.

Meanwhile, YouTube has come out with an experimental version of an HTML5-supported player and a Pandora-like music feature called Disco.

The big-media online video site is working on a plan that would allow viewers to access the five most recent airings of hit TV series, but older episodes would require a subscription fee of something like $5, the Los Angeles Times said in breaking the paid Hulu story.

Not all series would require paid access, the Times said, speculating that 20 primetime shows would be involved.

Hulu is owned by News Corp., Disney and NBC Universal, an arrangement that has long fueled speculation that the online video site’s days were numbered, at least as a free entity.

Not a shocker. NewsCorp. bigshot Chase Carey signaled the bad news about Hulu last fall:

“I think a free model is a very difficult way to capture the value of our content,” Carey told a conference put on by Broadcasting & Cable. “I think what we need to do is deliver that content to consumers in a way where they will appreciate the value. Hulu concurs with that, it needs to evolve to have a meaningful subscription model as part of its business.”

Comcast’s takeover of NBC Uni probably figured into the subscription-model thinking, as the cabler seeks to wall off network programming on the Internet, a fear of consumer groups.

The Walt Disney Co.-Microsoft negotiations could lead to live streams that would be similar to ESPN 360, which offers major and minor events via some high-speed broadband providers, the New York Times reported today.

The content is similar to what’s offered as premium packages on DirecTV, including ESPN Game Plan (college football) and ESPN Full Court (college basketball). Tennis, cricket and soccer are available on ESPN 360’s schedule as well.

The deal could lead to ESPN interactive games, the Times speculated.

The Xbox 360, with its Xbox Live marketplace, has been the leader in streaming video among the three major “living room” consoles, but Sony’s PS3 and even Wii are busy playing catch-up. Xbox Live now has an audience about the size of a minor cable network.

Microsoft has been reported in talks with most major major entertainment creators — studios and TV networks — regarding broad content deals for the Xbox 360, envisioned as a home media center.

The Watch Instantly programming begins this spring, the companies said. (The New York Times broke the story and gives the big picture.)

As with the Sony PlayStation 3, Wii owners can’t stream video until they get their hands on a software disc made available by Netflix. (Reserve a Wii Netflix disc.) Only Xbox 360 owners can skip that step.

The Wii broke big in the console market due to its family-fun games, in which players physically interact with the machine. Video hasn’t been in the picture until now. The Wii machines still cannot play high definition, however.

Xbox360, which does offers HD video, is light years ahead in the video game. PS3 added Netflix’s streams in November and has a built-in Blu-ray player.

“Our research shows that 86 percent of all U.S. Wii consoles are located in the living room,” Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime said in the Netflix-Wii press release. “The Wii console is the social hub around which friends and family members gather to play games and have fun.”

Watch Instantly plays catalog movies and TV shows, but not many current Hollywood hits. Video and audio quality are just OK. Netflix continues to integrate more content into the service — customers have the option of renting or streaming these titles — while rival Blockbuster plans to compete with streams of current films.

Netflix customers have access to the service without additional charge. Some titles are offered directly on the console. Beyond that, users use their computers to place videos eligible for streaming into a queue, then call up that content via the game console. The process is horsey, but it works.

The so-so Watch Instantly won’t bring Wii many new customers, but at least it’ll give big-box salesmen an affirmative answer to the “Does it play video?” questions.

Netflix chieftain Reed Hastings told CES last week: “Pretty soon we are going to be a streaming business with some DVDs.” He reported that in the last quarter, half of the rental giant’s subscribers had streamed at least 15 minutes of video each month.

Netflix announced a handful of video hardware partners for Watch Instantly during the Consumer Electronics Show. They include Panasonic, Sanyo, Sharp, Toshiba and Funai, which distributes the Philips, Magnavox, Sylvania and Emerson brands in the United States.