Everybody and his dog these days has a scheme to sell video content using the Internet. From online rental clubs that mail physical DVDs to pay-per-download services like iTunes, a world of entertainment is only a credit card (and sometimes, a mountain of tech hassles) away. Few old-school corporate titans, though, are interested in giving the goods away a la user-generated phenomena like YouTube €” until now. Hulu, a site launched by network-TV rivals NBC and Fox, has just started streaming tons of high-quality video online for free. We’re not talking about the homemade stuff YouTube is famous for; this is a catalog of well-known movies and TV shows, old and current, presented in their entirety. (The companies are hoping to get the other networks on board soon.) The catalog is expanding but not comprehensive: There’s no Lost or The Wire, but you can watch all the fourth-season episodes of The Office (pictured) and the complete run to date of the small-town heart-tugger Friday Night Lights €” not to mention vintage titles like Starsky and Hutch, Kojak, and Fame. The video quality is great (it’s watchable even when blown up to full-screen), and the site’s design is clean and intuitive. Nothing is really free, of course: Hulu is supported by ads, although in a long bout of sampling this and that movie (from the sci-fi cartoon Titan A.E. to Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha), I didn’t run into a single one.