(credit: TechCrunch)

Is the long-hoped-for merger of Hollywood sparkle and Internet ubiquity finally taking place?

Don’t count on it. Yet, several companies took significant steps toward bringing studio-quality productions to this Web this week at the TechCrunch50 conference in San Francisco.

For years, entrepreneurs have seen bringing 3D environments and more polished video to the grainy, jerky Net as a holy grail of sorts.

Companies such as Animoto (top photo) would agree.

“The whole (Internet) experience is going to be more like what you see in film and television,” said Brad Jefferson, CEO. “The convergence is pretty imminent.”

Animoto is hoping to participate. The company launched a beta test version of a slick slideshow site last week. Upload photos and music, and Animoto will turn them into a video.

Already the company has 250,000 registered users, 10 percent of whom are paid customers. Videos less than 30 seconds long are free.

“We’re taking production values and brining them to the Internet,” said Jefferson.

Actor Ashton Kutcher (side photo) unveiled his own site, BlahGirls, which vows to be a similarly interactive place for news about celebrities. Teenage girls see two to three new animated videos a week and can comment on what they see.

Kutcher, who appeared in Punk’d, said his goal at TechCrunch is to learn about interactive technologies and features that can be integrated with his content.

“We’re looking for marriages and collaborations with companies that are great in this space,” he said.

By Mark Boslet, Editor at Large.