The Hulu Online Video Network launches Wednesday in the USA, coming out of a beta that has lasted many months. Some content is now available online at Hulu.com. The project is a joint venture of NBC Universal and News Corp, and thanks to a rich set of content agreements Hulu will provide access to a fairly large number of popular TV shows, sports events, and movies.

Like YouTube and other video sharing services Hulu will offer on demand content, content embedding and content sharing. Unlike most other services the content from Hulu will be high quality broadcast TV shows. Hulu’s exceptional user interface and viewer are impressive, and it’s clear they’ll have a lot of activity at the site. In fact there are long term implications for TIVO and even cable networks as sites like Hulu increasingly provide TV shows on demand right from the users PC.

The big wild card for Hulu is whether it will be able to monetize this TV content profitably. Network television enjoys exceptional advertising success, and the tendency of advertisers to stick with what they know may challenge Hulu’s ability to turn enough of a profit to make this service viable for the long haul. However, if Hulu can find the holy grail of high profits from video content it may herald a whole new age of broadcast TV… on our Macs and PCs.