Highlights of hard hits, game-winning plays, and bloopers are always popular on the evening’s sports cast, but they’re assembled by production crews at TV stations and networks. You’re left sitting on the couch, remote control in hand.

Now thanks to a partnership between Veoh, the NCAA, and Collegiate Images LLC, you can assemble your own highlight reels of the week’s football games and share them with friends and fans across the US. You can even embed highlights in MySpace and Facebook profiles and on your Website or blog.

NBC Universal cancels its contract to sell television shows through iTunes, claiming a dispute over flexible pricing. News Corp. chief operating officer Peter Chernin echoes those sentiments and goes on record to predict “prickly” negotiations with Apple in the future. And yesterday, CBS Chief Executive Les Moonves told attendees gathered at the Merrill Lynch investor conference: “We like our relationship with iTunes… we’re sort of staying out of the battle.”

So what gives? One word. Hulu.

That’s Hulu, the soon-be-launched joint online video venture between NBC Universal and News Corp.

First there were TV-like shows on the Internet: “LonelyGirl 15”. Then came big-name backers upping the quality ante: Michael Eisner’s “Prom Queen.” Now we’re seeing the creative professionals of TV Land and Hollywood getting into the mix.

MySpaceTV has teamed up with Seventeen, the teen-ager magazine, to produce a new Web series, “Freshman 15”, which launched this week. “Freshman 15” is a reality show that follows 15 girls as they experience college life for the first time.

And in November, two big-time movie and TV producers will debut an original series, “Quarterlife”, also on MySpaceTV. Marshall Herskovitz and Edward Zwick have made films like “Blood Diamond” and “The Last Samurai” and television series such as “thirtysomething” and “My So Called Life.”

Americans are watching more streaming online video than ever and the big winner continues to be Google-owned YouTube.

The comScore Video Metrix report for July 2007 — which looked at the usage of streaming video sites only — reveals that nearly 75 percent of U.S. Internet users watched videos online, up from 71.4 percent in March, and the average viewing time per-month was just under three hours.

Google-owned video sites (which basically means YouTube) lead in terms of unique viewers, grabbing 37.6% of the market (67.8 million), with Fox Interactive in second place with 19.9% (35.8 million) and Yahoo! Sites a close third with 19.6% (35.3 million).

While it’s yet-to-be confirmed, TechCrunch reports that News Corp. and NBC’s joint venture, Hulu, has made its first acquisition: Bejing-based startup Mojiti. It’s thought that Mojiti, an online video platform that enables users to annotate videos at specific time points (while also forming the basis for search functionality) will provide a part of the technology used to power Hulu. Mojiti founder, Eric Feng, was previously at Microsoft Research Asia.

TechCrunch editor, Mike Arrington, expresses surprise that Hulu would go outside for some of its core technology, while conceding that, having missed their previously announced launch date of summer 2007, an acquisition could get things back on track.

Veoh, the company behind the video sharing site of the same name, as well as the Internet TV app, VoehTV (see our review), have announced a new set of funders. Joining ex-Disney CEO, Michael Eisner, along with Shelter Capital Partners, Spark Capital, and Time Warner Investments, Veoh’s backers now also include former Viacom and MTV Networks CEO Tom Freston’s Firefly3 and Jonathan Dolgen, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Viacom Entertainment Group.

That’s a pretty heavyweight media lineup, with plenty of Hollowood/TV network connections, which, moving forward, is likely to be a prerequisite for companies in the Internet TV space whose success will in part be based on their ability to secure major content deals. In this respect, VeohTV competitor, Joost, looks particularly well placed with backing from CBS and Viacom.

The good news: Major U.S. television networks continue to embrace Internet technology and are putting their shows on the Web for online viewing, just like they did last year.

The bad news: Their online offerings remain sporadic; their Internet strategies feel like “we have to” rather than “we want to”; and — worst of all — they still haven’t embraced the idea that we are living in a new digital world, with different rules, participants, and expectations all around.

We’ve looked at the online offerings of the five major networks — ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and The CW — and sadly no one is blowing the game wide open, although they’re trying. To their credit, the networks are offering some of their top-rated shows online, viewable on their own websites.

But to their discredit, the networks don’t provide streaming for all of their shows, prime time or not, and streaming schedules vary widely. While video quality continues to improve, many networks have crowded and difficult to use interfaces, which detracts from the fun of watching a favorite TV show. Sometimes it’s just not worth the effort.

Here’s our journey through the land of network streaming.

The Sunday Times reports that Microsoft has been in talks with the BBC along with “several other European media companies” as it gears up for the European launch of its XBox Live Video Marketplace.

Ross Honey, senior director for media at Microsoft’s content and partner strategy group, is quoted describing the BBC as a “great content provider” and says that Microsoft is “working diligently on multiple fronts to make it happen.” The BBC’s growing library of high-definition content, such as the award-winning Planet Earth series, makes it a good fit for the XBox 360’s HD video capabilities.

The Internet TV space just got even more crowded.

Hewlett-Packard and Dave Networks (a white label IPTV provider) are teaming up to launch Next.TV, a P2P-based Internet TV service not dissimilar to Joost, Babelgum and — to a lesser extent — VoehTV.

According to PC Magazine, Next.TV will debut later this month as a software update for HP’s consumer notebooks running Microsoft Vista, and by early 2008 all of the company’s consumer notebooks will come pre-installed with the service. Eventually, the company plans to offer Next.TV to non-HP customers as a software download available from its website.

A Wall Street Journal article today says Sony is to challenge Apple in TV and movie downloads.

On one hand, that makes sense. Sony is carefully positioning its PlayStation 3 game console as the entertainment hub in people’s homes. The PlayStation Portable (PSP), linked to the PS3, provides the mobile view-on-the-go component, and Sony just last week introduced the first Walkmans that can play movies, trailers, and music video clips, in addition to playing music. Also in the mix is Sony’s line of Bravia televisions, which delivers the high-definition monitor to view content, either through the PS3 or a module connected to the TV that allows downloading of Internet content.

With Internet connections becoming faster and broadband more readily available, it makes sense that the downloading of television and movie content only increases in the coming years, perhaps even eclipsing the digital music market as some analysts are predicting.

Sony and its CEO, Howard Stringer, is betting big on video downloading.