Comcast, Rivals Leaning on Video on Demand

Separately, Addis said VOD could be used to lure satellite customers into dumping their service for cable. A Comcast telephone survey of 800 satellite customers, not necessarily in Comcast's market, found that the percentage of people willing to drop DBS service through a traditional "dish buyback" program increased "very significantly" when the salesperson explained that VOD would be part of the cable package.

But satellite operators aren't willing to cede this advanced services territory to cable. Both DirecTV and EchoStar Communications' (DISH Quote) Dish Network are pushing digital video recorders, or DVRs, which allow users to collect mini TV libraries, often automatically, on a hard drive in their satellite receiver.

DirecTV, for example, is rolling out DVRs with 70 hours or more of storage capacity later this year, as opposed to the standard 35-hour DVRs it already has in its user base. And though cable operators say that people are often using VOD to watch television programming on demand, Tim Traynor, DirecTV vice president of advanced services, labels cable VOD as mostly a movie play. "At the end of the day," says Traynor, a DVR "helps the customer with all of their video watching, not just the movie part."