If you’ve never had the opportunity to check out Newscorp’s (FOX) and NBC’s joint venture HULU, I recommend it. It is a wonderfully well thought out and elegant execution of what web TV should be.

I was hardly concerned that my current work deadline was going to keep me from the TV and my Olympics obsession. I was sure that NBC was going to make a killing in additional advertising revenue by utilizing HULU or NBCOlympics.com with Olympic broadcasts affording me access to Beijing from my office computer. Not so.

What NBC did do is offer DVDs of the Olympics that could be purchased online at the end of each event day. My guess is that they assumed that potential customers would lock themselves in some sort solitary confinement to avoid exposure to any news sources that inconveniently report Olympic highlights until the DVD arrived.

I’m not disappointed, I ‘m pissed. How could a network that gets online video so right, get the most prestigious event in their broadcast calendar, so wrong. It’s sort of like owning a Lear Jet and driving it on the freeway.

Apparently I’m not the only one who noticed. From a Wall Street Journal article today.

NBC’s decision to limit the amount of Olympics footage on its Web site has ticked off sports fans. But that decision could also dog the network in another way: NBCOlympics.com will generate just $5.75 million in video-ad revenue from the Games, according to estimates from research firm eMarketer Inc.

At a time when video ads are starting to catch on, analysts say NBC had an opportunity to make a lot more money had it offered more online content during the Games. CBS Sports, by contrast, streamed all of the NCAA’s March Madness basketball-tournament games live earlier this year and made $23 million in ad revenue, the CBS Corp. network says. (The basketball tournament lasted three weeks, while the Olympics runs over two weeks.)

I suppose it could be worse, I could be a NBC stock holder.