That's where Hulu has succeeded admirably. It sidesteps the crass issue of payment with advertisements, a model that most consumers are familiar and comfortable with (not to mention that there are far fewer ads on Hulu, at least for the moment). And there's no issue of permanence: all the video is stored on Hulu's servers in the mythical cloud, so you don't have to find space on your hard drive on your shelf. Plus, it's arguably even faster than downloading a TV episode from iTunes--call it instant gratification.

The last remaining advantage iTunes truly holds is portability, letting you take your video with you in places where you don't have a network connection. But those cases are being eroded. In March, for example, I watched a full episode of the NBC drama on Hulu at 35,000 feet, thanks to Wi-Fi provided by Virgin America, and it was . And if Hulu truly does , then there will be few places you won't be able to get access to television.

Of course, Hulu does have some weaknesses of its own. For one thing, it's available only in the U.S., while iTunes has expanded its television reach to countries like the U.K., Australia, Canada, France, and Germany. More prominent, though, is not Hulu's geographic restrictions, themselves presumably the result of rights issues, but rather its seemingly maniacal bent to keep its content limited to computer screens instead of televisions--no doubt to appease the networks who own most of the service.

For example, over the past view months, Hulu has with media center software developer Boxee. I've just started using Boxee recently myself, in conjunction with a Mac mini and my first HDTV, and the ability to stream Hulu to your living room TV feels nothing short of . It's understandable--if not really sympathetic--that the networks want to keep their content off those big screens, but I think it's only a matter of time before they're forced to relent. They can't play hide-and-seek with Boxee forever, especially if they want to move television into the future.

So where does that leave iTunes? Perhaps there is still a future in purchasing television content online. Maybe the company could make a subscription model work for television in a way that it never could imagine for music. But as Hulu continues to gain strength by expanding its content partnerships and improving its features, I start to suspect that that ship has steamed off into the sunset.