Confused? Of course. So was I, when I checked out Hulu’s new “Desktop” app, launched today as part of the video service’s new “Labs” collection of experimental offerings.

Basically, it’s downloadable software that makes it easier than ever to watch Hulu’s shows and clips in the same way that you’d watch TV–on your sofa, remote in hand. But Hulu wants to make sure you don’t actually think it replaces TV.

Note how the company describes it: “A lean-back viewing experience for your personal computer” that will work on Macs and PCs with “standard Windows Media Center or Apple remote controls”–but not with Microsoft’s (MSFT) Windows Media Center machines or Apple’s (AAPL) AppleTV boxes. And it also isn’t designed to work with any other Web-to-TV software or boxes, like Vudu.

To spell this out: I’m writing this post from the “cave” that the All Things Digital team has set up for the D7 conference, and it’s full of gorgeous 22-inch and 30-inch Mac displays that are much nicer than anything that sits in my cramped Brooklyn apartment. Hulu is saying that they’d be A-OK with me watching Tina Fey and crew, via their service, on those monitors. But they don’t want me trying to get that show on an actual television.

Isn’t a screen a screen? Nope. Not to Hulu’s owners: GE’s (GE) NBC, News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox, and soon, Disney’s ABC (ABC). To them, it’s important to make the distinction between TV programming, which generates significant ad revenue and/or cable subscription fees, and online video, which generates very little at all. That’s why NBC CEO Jeff Zucker reiterated his opposition to Boxee, the software that makes it easy to move Web video like Hulu to TV sets.

Now all he has to do is convince tech-savvy entertainment consumers to play along. Good luck!

UPDATE: Several readers have suggested to me that Hulu and its owners aren’t as dumb as they seem, and that they do indeed intend to use Desktop eventually, as a Boxee-like product of their own–that is, they will use it to let people watch Hulu on TV. If so, that means that Jeff Zucker wasn’t being honest when he declared that “right now we’re committed to Hulu being an online experience, and that’s where our vision is today, and I think that will continue.”

But for what it’s worth, whenever I’ve talked to anyone at ABC, Fox, NBC or Hulu, all of them have been consistently mindful about not trying to disrupt the existing value chain that supports the cable and broadcast TV business–“the ecosystem” is the euphemism they prefer. So I don’t find Zucker’s comments so far-fetched.

Anyone want to weigh in? If you use your real name you can sound off in the comments below. Or you can drop me a line at  peter@allthingsd.com.

The program, created by Echostar’s (SATS) Sling group, is designed to let users watch TV shows, beamed from their own sets, on the  iPhone. It goes on sale for $29.99 today via Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes store–but without the ability to work over AT&T’s 3G network.

That’s our decision, says AT&T (T). The company’s rationale: The iPhone’s too powerful, and our network isn’t powerful enough.

That’s the gist of its argument, which both makes sense and confuses. AT&T says the Sling app could consume lots of network capacity, which is straightforward enough. But you can already use Sling apps for other handsets, like the BlackBerry, on AT&T.

The difference, AT&T says, is that the iPhone really isn’t a phone at all, but a PC that happens to make phone calls. “We consider smartphones like the iPhone to be personal computers in that they have the same hardware and software attributes as PCs.”

No argument there, either. But again, given that you can use the SlingPlayer over AT&T’s spectrum using different devices, it seems as if AT&T is really making a different argument: Just because you can watch TV on other devices doesn’t mean you will. But if we give people the chance to watch TV on iPhone, they’ll flock to it–and our network can’t handle that.

See for yourself. Here’s AT&T’s full statement, via Engadget:

Slingbox, which would use large amounts of wireless network capacity, could create congestion and potentially prevent other customers from using the network. The application does not run on our 3G wireless network. Applications like this, which redirect a TV signal to a personal computer, are specifically prohibited under our terms of service. We consider smartphones like the iPhone to be personal computers in that they have the same hardware and software attributes as PCs.

That said, we don’t restrict users from going to a Web site that lets them view videos. But what our terms and conditions prohibit is the transferring, or slinging, of a TV signal to their personal computer or smartphone.

The Slingbox application for the iPhone runs on WiFi. That’s good news for AT&T’s iPhone 3G customers, who get free WiFi access at our 20,000 owned and operated hot spots in the U.S., including Starbucks, McDonalds, Barnes & Noble, hotels, and airports. AT&T is the industry leader in WiFi.

[Image credit: Markhillary]

Attention New York publishers and advertisers!!!

Those people pestering you to vote for “Roi Asap” today? They’re not working for a real candidate!

This warning comes to you from a MySpace worker bee, who is up in arms about a promotional stunt from the MySpace ad sales team.

“Roi,” you see, is a semi-clever pun based on a term MySpace ad chief Jeff Berman used in a press release promoting the targeting technology last month (as in, “Return On Investment”).

MySpace is supposed to hire dozens of fake campaign workers to push Roi/advertising targeting today at midtown offices in Manhattan.

I don’t see the problem here. But the MySpace employee thinks the fake vote-soliciting is “ridiculous” and wants it “exposed.” Okay, done.

More interesting will be quarterly earnings call from MySpace owner, News Corp., on Wednesday afternoon, and what CEO Rupert Murdoch has to say about his prize Web property’s recent performance.

News Corp. (NWS) earnings calls are always entertaining, but Wednesday’s call should be more intriguing than most. It will be the first time Murdoch has sounded off in a public forum, since the economy went into free-fall.

Murdoch had already sounded the alarm bells last spring. And, at the D: All Things Digital conference in May, he predicted that the U.S. would be in an 18-month recession.

More recently, during the company’s August earnings call, he said that local television ads had fallen off a cliff. (News Corp., owner of Dow Jones, is also the owner of this Web site.)

But even as Murdoch has predicted gloomy times for some of his company’s assets, he and his execs have talked up the prospects of MySpace. During the last call, News Corp. COO Peter Chernin said Fox Interactive Media, the News Corp. Web unit dominated by MySpace, would be able to increase revenues by 30 percent during the coming year.

Predicting FIM revenues has proved tricky for News Corp., which had to publicly back down last spring from a promise it had made in the summer of 2007. And now that Web advertisers are finally admitting that they’re seeing weakness, that 30 percent may be difficult to achieve too.

Given that the year-ago quarter was underwhelming, and that the last quarter covers the July to September period–most of which was catastrophe-free–there’s a good chance FIM will report in-line ad sales on Wednesday.

But pay attention to whether Murdoch and Chernin are able to reiterate past projections for the rest of the year.

I’m told that the ad-targeting technology MySpace is pushing is indeed boosting revenue at the site. And the video plans the company announced yesterday are interesting as well: An automated ID program will let publishers like Viacom (VIA) unit MTV Networks automatically place ads on user-uploaded content that they own.

Google’s (GOOG) YouTube announced something similar earlier this year.

But those programs only work at the margins of MySpace’s business, and are long-term plays. The most important part is getting big advertisers to buy big campaigns on MySpace’s prime real estate.

Such as its homepage, where a one-day campaign was going for an average of $500,000 earlier this year, and where particularly intrusive campaigns could garner $1,000,000 for 24 hours.

If those rates are softening, then it won’t matter how innovative the company is in the near term: It’s going to have to reset expectations.