But the wave of media innovation set off by fast Internet connections is an order of magnitude that is more challenging still.

I look at Web-based video and see breakthrough technologies trying to emerge. But which of them will take off, and how will they challenge conventional television and movies? Moreover, where in all this is the model for solid revenue?

As far as I can see, the smartest people in the world haven't figured this out, so maybe I shouldn't feel embarrassed at being baffled.

You would think that if ever there was a secure revenue model in the world of Internet video, it would be YouTube. Here's a company that pulls three-quarters of online video viewers. MySpaceTV, a distant second, draws 9 percent.

Google saw so much promise in YouTube that it coughed up $1.65 billion to buy the company. Yet Google CEO Eric Schmidt concedes that his team hasn't figured out how to make money with this prime acquisition.

Video, it turns out, has a sort of judo hold on Google. Think about this: Every minute of the day, about 10 hours' worth of video is posted to YouTube. Almost anything can be found there, from high school graduations to old rock concerts and scenes from family vacations. The problem is that this is largely amateur content, something advertisers have little interest in supporting.

From Google's perspective, making it all available involves increasingly devoting its network to YouTube's considerable bandwidth demands. Find a way to extract revenue from the obvious and growing public interest in video and you have the potential to become rich. If Google can't crack this advertising nut, who can?

The same can be said for the legions of small, creative video producers who have discovered that the Net provides fast and inexpensive ways to put material in front of the public.

"Break a Leg" is a highly regarded Net-based series about making a sitcom in San Francisco, one recognized for solid production values (breakaleg.tv).

Yet in two years of work, "Break a Leg" has grossed little more than $2,500.

Online viewers, it turns out, prefer free content, so the insertion of ads can be challenging.

Add to that the fact that many independent productions can be viewed on a range of sites, making it difficult for advertisers to adopt consistent pricing strategies.

Then factor in that the great bulk of this work is amateur, with no easy way to sift out the best nuggets, and you can see why the major studios are both fascinated with online programming and deeply concerned about the best way to proceed.

Viewers love TV + Internet

From a viewer's perspective, the benefits of integrating television and the Internet are enormous.

Intrigued by a chance encounter with the show "Jericho," I turned to Veoh (veoh.com), a site where the show's episodes are available. The beauty of online archiving is that I could simply go back to Episode 1 to figure out what was going on in this post-apocalypse drama. Having done so, I worked my way through the show in sequence.

I can't say I prefer to watch TV on a monitor I work on all day long. Many techniques are now making that unnecessary.

Consider what Sony is doing with its Bravia TV, an Internet-connected television that points to integration between the PC, TV and gaming systems like Sony's PlayStation.

Sony is hardly alone, with Time Warner Cable moving toward offering equipment that will let consumers watch Web content on their TVs through a set-top box. Add Netflix, the popular DVD distribution service that now offers a player that can stream movies from the Web to customers' televisions.

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