In a throwback to dotcom days, Hulu, a company that has not shown that it can make a profit, may be considering an initial public offering.

The New York Times reported today:

Hulu, the rapidly growing hub for online television and movies, aims to go public through an offering that could value the company at more than $2 billion, according to people briefed on the matter.

Outside of the education market, online video has not been demonstrated to be profitable, although many analysts expect that situation to change over time as more people turn to the web and digital downloads for entertainment.

A handful of companies, including Netflix and Apple, have created a bridge from the Internet to the living room, the place where most Americans go to be entertained, but no one has seen any wild success serving video digitally via broadband. Netflix allows unlimited downloads of a fraction of its library through a variety of set top boxes at no additional fee. It’s included with a monthly subscription to their mail-in service. Apple utilizes a pay per use model allowing both rental and purchases.

Both companies are aggressively pursuing the market for digitally delivered video. Apple may even go so far as to begin selling televisions with their Apple TV technology built in. Netflix, on the other hand, is entering into a $1 billion deal to stream movies from Paramount, Lionsgate and MGM through their partnership with Epix, a hybrid cable channel, digital streaming service backed by the three distributors. But..

Netflix doesn’t get to stream its Epix titles until 90 days after they show up on cable.

I am not even going to mention cable and satellite companies. They more than anyone have a vested interest in capitalizing on “on demand” digital services. They are also already inside the living room–the place where people go to be entertained in the home.

Hulu may be seeing the light and by light I mean the need to make a profit. They just recently announced a subscription service for $10 a month.

Online video site Hulu, under pressure from its media company parents to generate a bigger profit, launched a subscription service Tuesday with complete access to back episodes of popular television shows.

YouTube was bought by Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion. It has not turned a profit yet, but analysts expect that they may do so at some point this year based on the advertisements it embeds in the videos on its site, advertisements that users have found to be intrusive and distracting. So, they are not exactly operating on strength.

Currently, YouTube claims the most views per day by a long shot, with around 145 million viewers in June. Hulu sees somewhere between 24 to 44 million per month, but online measurement services like comScore are still trying to figure out how to measure traffic, so the best that can be expected is a ballpark figure.

Apple has demonstrated its ability to convert massive numbers of people to their technology platforms. They’ve done it successfully three different times now in three different markets: music (ipod), wireless (iphone), tablet computing (ipad). While they may or may not be making a profit in books (ibooks) and television/movies (apple tv), they have a solid foot in the door in both markets. Pretty soon, they may also be the only player in the market selling their own TV, a TV that is likely to look, sound and interface better than any other on the market.

While Hulu is one of the top five players in online video, it seems that filing for an I.P.O. may be a little premature and perhaps even a little irresponsible as it is not even clear that they can actually operate profitably. It may even indicate that they are a little desperate for cash as they struggle to match the war chests of two very profitable companies.