The tech/work behind Avatar is far more expensive then Toy Story. There are plenty of poor quality animation that pop up in films by major studios. And there are a number of quality cg animation by students for example http://vimeo.com/1470875 Avatar is really an edge case, majority of the shows on Hulu don't cost that much. For example: http://philipbloom.net/2010/04/10/house-season-finale-shot-e...

The finale of a popular show was shot using the Canon 5Dmkii. A camera many amateurs are using to capture their content. There are some stories that are best told with the big tech and budget of major studios, but like I mentioned, in most cases, the cost of promotion and over paying for hyped talent is keeping everything they do very expensive.