YouTube remains the dominant video site online, but it’s built around user-generated, amateur videos. Hulu, on the other hand, has agreements with major TV networks that gives it access to current (and professional) programming — an area that YouTube has been trying to beef up for a few years now. That kind of programming is what attracts ad dollars, as the Times report explains:

Hulu’s rights to the current season’s TV shows have drawn interest from Google and Yahoo, in part because these popular programs have attracted more than 600 advertisers — including such major brands as McDonald’s, Johnson & Johnson and Toyota. Indeed, the site expects to bring in $500 million in revenue this year from advertising and proceeds from its Hulu Plus subscription service.

According to the most recent comScore numbers, Hulu showed about 1.3 billion of the 4.6 billion total video ads displayed in May.

(ComScore’s numbers include streaming ads only, and don’t include ad overlays or banner ads — both of which are common to YouTube.)

Hulu was the 10th most popular video destination in May, according to comScore’s count of unique viewers. But it was second overall in minutes-per-viewer, behind only YouTube.

None of the companies mentioned provided a comment to the LA Times.

Each product or system below requires some sort of new hardware, either a set-top box or a entirely new TV. Prices range from a low of $59 for the cheapest Roku box to well over $1,000 for the largest Sony Internet TV.

The majority of these systems do not provide access to the full internet — only Google TV currently does — but they all provide internet content in various forms and to varying degrees. Yahoo Connected TV, for example, offers a growing library of “widgets” that provide web content: “the Best of the Web on TV” is the slogan. (See update below.)

This widget or app approach is very analogous to the smartphone universe and we should see that model continue to gain traction as an alternative to simply putting a browser on the big screen (as you have now with Opera on the Wii). Internet content and its presentation need to be optimized for the “form factor” of TV and the “lean back” experience. YouTube, for example, has developed a special “lean back” version for this reason.

Some of these systems are more “social” than others (e.g., Boxee, Xbox Live). But overall the available content and degree of internet access varies widely. While I would handicap each of these providers somewhat differently and believe some have a better chance than others, it’s still quite unclear which systems will penetrate the mainstream.

Taken together, however, they do make clear that we’re entering a new era in the evolution of TV, or as I like to call it the “master screen.”

• Apple TV
• Boxee
• Google TV
• Roku
• Xbox Live
• Yahoo Connected TV

Update: I was corrected that the Boxee Box does offer full internet access through a browser.

Postscript: See our updated comparison chart and reviews of some products, below:

• Internet-To-TV Players Compared: Roku, Apple TV, Boxee & Google TV
• Life With Google TV: First Day Review & Impressions
• Programming Your DVR Made Easy: Google TV, Dish & The Logitech Revue
• Boxee Box: First Day Review & Impressions
• Apple TV: First Day Review & Impressions
• Roku: First Day Review & Impressions
• Roku + Hulu Plus = Pretty Awesome

Also see our Internet-To-TV page for further stories that will come.

Here’s the chart for September:

Video viewing overall was down slightly in September in the U.S.

ComScore says that 178 million U.S. internet users watched online video in August, and averaged 14.3 hours per viewer.

The new pages are no longer dull looking, they show up to “five pages of topics that are trending in search,” in a sleek black background. You can scroll through the pages manually or turn on the autoscroll feature. As part of this announcement, Yahoo keeps pushing the “engagement” metric saying:

Already, we’ve seen double-digit percentage increases in engagement for both image and video search since launching these new homepages, with a 60% increase in time spent on the image search homepage.

Here are screen shots of the new look:

The new feature acts similarly to what Yahoo’s done in the other verticals. Now, when using Yahoo Video Search to find TV shows, searchers will get a series of refinements in the left-side column that offer deeper searches for specific characters, popular episodes, and seasons. Here’s the screenshot of a search for How I Met Your Mother:

The second refiner deals with searches for popular film actors. The video results page will now show links to clips from an actor’s popular movies, like this search for Tom Hanks:

Yahoo calls these search “refiners” but their real strength is in organizing the available content into logical, user-friendly subsets.

A video search for [U2] shows the new refinements in action: On the left side of the screen are new options to drill down to see U2 videos related to specific albums or specific songs.

You can click any album or song to see the video results that match the refinement without losing the context of your original search. It looks and works similar to the travel photo tours refinement that Yahoo added to image search earlier this year.

One more note: on the image above, you’ll see a box labeled “U2 – Twitter Videos.” Although we don’t recall any specific announcement of this feature, Yahoo tells us it’s not new and not related to the real-time search tests that Yahoo is planning.

Changes and upgrades for smartphones include the following:

• Dynamically updated content with pagination – without using additional screen real estate or refreshing, users are able to access a wealth of content. For example, the ‘Today’ module now surfaces ten of the leading stories from around the Web and gives users immediate access to 48 of the top news, business, sports and entertainment articles directly to consumers’ fingertips.
• An enhanced RSS reader –   that now supports photos with captions, and adds the ability to scroll through more headlines from favorite feeds without having to refresh content.
• Enhanced mobile video integration – with one click consumers can watch streaming video including the Yahoo! produced Tech Ticker – a rundown of the latest financial news, and Prime Time in No Time – a recap of last night’s TV shows, as well as news, entertainment and sports videos from the Associated Press.
• Enhanced movie results – movie posters now show you exactly what’s playing at a theatre near you, and with a few simple clicks you can watch the trailer, read reviews from Yahoo! and Rotten Tomatoes, and even buy tickets from participating theatres – all directly from your mobile device.

Yahoo’s homepage is one of the most visited sites in mobile in the US and worldwide, although Yahoo’s mobile search share lags Google — as it does on the PC.

The Yahoo site is extremely well done and offers a high degree of customization with “My Favorites” for those who sign in. And by signing in Yahoo can target ads in mobile based on PC activity as well.

While watching the event online, many viewers were also searching for information about the people involved. People not watching a live stream were looking for videos of what they missed. Yahoo says it saw spikes in searches for

• Elvis Presley’s funeral
• the casket company that made Michael Jackson’s casket
• Jackson’s daughter, Paris, and video of her speaking
• Brooke Shields and video of her eulogy
• names such as Pastor Luscious Smith, Reverend Al Sharpton, and Shaheen Jafargholi, along with other Jackson family members and friends

Most of the searches listed on Google Trends are also Jackson-related, and many mirror the types of queries Yahoo reported. A Google News spokesperson says search activity today was “significant, but not to the same extent we experienced the day he passed.”

Meanwhile, a Facebook spokesperson says there was plenty of interest in the Jackson ceremony there, too, but not as much as during the Obama inauguration. There were about 800,000 status updates related to the live coverage of today’s memorial, far less than the 1.8 million status updates on inauguration day with the word “Obama.” Facebook points out, though, that the inauguration was widely publicized for months – much longer than the Michael Jackson ceremony today.

According to comScore, Hulu has passed Yahoo properties and moved into the third spot with 2.6% of all videos viewed during March. Yahoo dropped to fourth with 2.3 million videos watched on its sites. Google properties (primarily YouTube) are still miles ahead of the competition with almost 41% of all videos viewed during the month.

ComScore estimates that almost 150 million Internet users watched an average of 97 videos during March, totaling almost 5.5 hours per person. The average Google/YouTube viewer watched 59 videos.