The beta testers on Hulu, News Corp. and NBC's video site, like hot girls just as much as the rest of us. The two most viewed videos of all time? A clip from 30 Rock called "Wear a Bra" and another from Keeping Up with The Kardashians that showcases a comely blonde sunbathing. See both videos after the jump. Other top clips? Most from Saturday Night Live, including "Lazy Sunday," the video that kickstarted YouTube for the masses, and Natalie Portman rapping.

I saw a theme this morning as I perused the various other tech sites: Hulu invites! Hulu, the video-streaming partnership between News Corp. and NBC, is throwing open its doors to many early adopters by offering up thousands of invites on several tech sites. If you haven't gotten a chance to play around with Hulu and want to see just what the hell Paul Boutin is complaining about, here's your chance. GigaOm, Read/WriteWeb, TechCrunch, and Mashable are giving away 2,500 invites each. All, we note, are clients of Federated Media, John Battelle's online-ad network. Coincidence, conspiracy, or just part of a future Hulu advertising campaign?

While NBC Universal and News Corp. keep Hulu, their online-video joint venture, under invitation-only wraps, OpenHulu, an independent website which appears to be legally embedding Hulu videos, is actually starting to earn some cash. Not only that, but it's getting a little attention from potential buyers, too. Not bad for just copying and pasting chunks of HTML code.

OpenHulu is the unauthorized website with all the Hulu videos embedded, allowing you to watch Fox and NBC TV shows even if you don't have an invite to the NBC/News Corp. service's private beta. After blog posts about the site hit the Digg front page yesterday, traffic spiked. Between 5 a.m. and 11 a.m. today, OpenHulu saw 104,051 ad impressions, site operator Mazyar Kazerooni told me. So how well did Google AdSense do for the site?

NBC and News Corp.'s joint Web-video venture Hulu remains in an invitation-only beta. But if you can't wait to access "Conan the Barbarian" online, blogger Matt Schlicht has your workaround. It's called OpenHulu. It's full of embedded Hulu videos like Arrested Development clip below. Other than whatever cash he's earning from Google ads he runs on the site, why's Schlicht taking so much time to index Hulu's content? "It's mainly the satisfaction of sticking it to the man and bending the rules," Schlict tells Last100. Sticking it to The Man by promoting his ad-supported content on your site and stirring up as much enthusiasm for his product as possible. Yeah! That'll teach him!

NBC has started the painful process of issuing refunds — about $500,000 apiece — to advertisers. Why? The network is not meeting prime-time ratings projections. Something to do with a bunch of greedy, striking writers who I fully blame for the rather hurried, ramshackle conclusion of Heroes' second season. But it's hard to fault the Writers Guild when NBC, along with every other network on the planet, is making a huge push onto the Web — Hulu, NBC Direct, and other online means of stiffing the writers. But NBC isn't the only one who will be hemorrhaging cash. According to Mediaweek, ratings are so poor that most networks are out of makegoods — free ad airtime to compensate for shortfalls — and will be forced to issue refunds like NBC. Worse news: If the strike continues, NBC plans to fill its programming gaps with reality TV. YouTube's looking better and better every day.

For all those whining about Hulu's video quality, the NBC-News Corp. venture as added high-definition content to its Web library. Right now, offerings are limited to a few movie trailers, but we're betting shows will pop up in HD before long. Not that that solves Hulu's terrible interface or lack of selection, of course. [NewTeeVee]

NBC and Apple have finally parted ways. All NBC Universal shows have been removed from iTunes completely after talks to renew their contract fell apart. Disagreements on pricing led the partnership, once hailed for saving NBC's The Office, to founder. But Apple found an unlikely replacement: News Corp.'s Fox studio, NBC's joint-venture partner in online-video site Hulu.

NBC Universal, in its ongoing effort to throw Steve Jobs into a jealous rage, is wooing every other feller with a video service in sight. In its man-harem: Jeff Bezos, with Amazon Unbox, and Jason Kilar, CEO of its joint venture with News Corp. Hulu. Add to the list Netflix CEO Reed Hastings. NBC has wooed Hastings into a syndication deal. As Apple used to do on iTunes, Netflix will offer new episodes of Heroes the day after they air, alongside a library of prior 30 Rock, Friday Night Lights, and The Office shows. Looks like someone can finally stop whining about the gaping hole left by the iTunes pullout.

I got hooked on iTunes TV shows last year, marathoning my way through Battlestar Galactica and then Lost. My TV-hating wife went from rolling her eyes to rolling up a chair to watch with me. But NBC has yanked the rug. My favorite shows of the moment — Galactica and the outstandingly witty 30 Rock — are no longer being added to iTunes. They're on Hulu, the new NBC/News Corp. site. I hate Hulu, for four very good reasons.

Afraid of being left in the stuffy, old-fashioned world of channel-hosted Web videos, the BBC is teaming up with rival U.K. broadcasters ITV and Channel 4 to develop their own multibrand TV destination. The model is Hulu, News Corp. and NBC's joint venture, which operates as a showcase for its partners' content as well as distributing it to other Web-video sites. The new British "aggregator," which will launch sometime in 2008, will offer content in a variety of formats, including free download, streaming, rental and purchase.

Wowza, everyone wants a piece of the YouTube market. During its third-quarter earnings call, Vivendi revealed plans to test a new content platform dubbed Zaoza that will mash together social networking and entertainment products together into an indistinguishable pulp. The running suspicion is Vivendi is setting up a site akin to the NBC Universal/News Corp. venture Hulu — never mind that Vivendi already has an interest in Hulu, through its 20 percent stake in NBC.

We might scoff at News Corp. and NBC's claims that their joint video project, Hulu, is capable of taking down YouTube, but the site isn't above stealing a page from Google's playbook. Alongside its own hosted video, Hulu's search database will cull links to rival networks' shows — particularly those hosted on Hulu distribution partners like AOL. Hulu might never become a one-stop video destination like YouTube, but it's positioning itself as a rival to Google in video search.

In case you're still waiting for your invite to the private beta version of Hulu, the new, YouTubes-killing online distribution channel for NBC Universal and News Corp's intellectual property, some bloggers have collected the URLs that will allow you to start watching episodes of The A-Team or Airwolf (as well as TV series and movies produced more recently than 1987, but we have no idea why you'd bother with those when you can be reliving George Peppard and Jan-Michael Vincent's glory days) right away. [Buzzfeed via Hurty Elbow]

You'll recall NBC's noisy departure from Apple's iTunes store in August. First we heard the problem was that NBC had asked Apple to raise per-episode prices to $2.99. Then, we heard Apple advocated cutting prices to 99 cents a show, arguing that volume would make up for lost profits. Now, NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker reveals he misplayed the negotiations even more than we could have imagined. He asked for a piece of Apple's iPod hardware sales.

Despite some all-night conference calls prior to launch, online-video site Hulu did not collapse prior to opening its doors for business. But keep refreshing. Despite pleasant early reviews of the sites service — people are variously describing its service as "really slick" and "very nice" — NBC and News Corp.'s joint venture is in trouble. Why?

Somebody bring Steve "sexy-calves" Chen back from Hong Kong. Things are getting ugly. And by things, I mean YouTube, which is previewing a redesign of its site that features drop-down menus and a new "look" (ugly) and "feel" (greased enamel?). NBC and News Corp.'s online-video joint venture Hulu may be months late and its launch team probably just got off another all-night conference call, but the site isn't out of the game yet. Not if the YouTube redesign team keeps screwing up Hulu's competition.

The website for Hulu, NBC and News Corp.'s online-video joint venture, looks pretty. But the reality of getting ready for next week's launch? Very messy. A tipster tells us that a dozen members of the Hulu launch team are stuck on an agonizing "all-night" conference call. Also on the call: Executives from distribution partners including AOL and Yahoo. The topic of discussion? No doubt the fact that the site, days away from launch, isn't quite ready. Poor, unlucky souls. No wonder their old-media colleagues have nicknamed them "Hulusers." And I suppose that makes the videos on the YouTube-notgonnabe website Huluser-generated content.

Word is that NBC and News Corp. will finally launch video site Hulu, its long-overdue response to YouTube, on Monday, October 29, making its self-imposed deadline of the end of October by two days. Never mind that it was originally supposed to launch on September 24, but CEO Jason Kilar begged for more time. Two days early, or 35 days late? On TV, it's all in how you spin it. [TechCrunch]

NewTeeVee confirms Valleywag's report from the weekend that NBC has pulled its YouTube channel. The reason, as we suggested, is the incipient launch of Hulu, NBC's unfortunately named joint venture with News Corp. A YouTube flack, almost a day after we posted our story, emailed this tired statement that she's graciously allowing us to attribute to spokesman Ricardo Reyes, even though we doubt he had anything to do with this limp piece of prose: