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Chattanooga Times/Free Press

By Clint Cooper, Chattanooga Times/Free Press, Tenn.

May 02--Whether your movie taste runs to classics ("Rear Window" ), romances ("Sleepless in Seattle"), comedies ("Stir Crazy"), tearjerkers ("Brian's Song") or westerns ("Two Mules for Sister Sara"), a movie is available for you to see right now. Or in 17 minutes. Or in two hours.

Or perhaps you prefer a cooking show, sports highlights, Latino shows, a movie trivia game or karaoke in your living room wearing your best Martina McBride outfit. All of it can be available on your television in three minutes. Or tomorrow. Or whenever you're ready for it.

On Demand, a video-ondemand service first offered locally by Comcast in January with its digital cable service, allows subscribers to choose from 4,000 hours of programming. Any program is available at any hour and can be paused, restarted, rewound, fast-forwarded and watched time after time during a 24-period through a digital converter box provided by the company.

"There's something for everybody," said Geoff Shook, the area general manager for the cable company. "It's a tremendous product. It puts TV viewing 100 percent on your schedule."

Ninety percent of the movies and programs have no additional charge, he said. New-release pay-per-view movies are $3.99, he said.

Of the company's 130,000 area subscribers, more than 40 percent have digital service, and, thus, access to On Demand, Mr. Shook said.

Charter Communications, which provides cable service for Ringgold, Ga., and Cleveland, Tenn., currently does not provide a video-on-demand service in either city, a company spokeswoman said.

Mr. Shook said subscribers can rent ($9.95 per month) as part of the company's packages a digital video recorder, which allows them to pick and choose the digital cable or On Demand program they want and store it on a hard drive for viewing anytime.

Dr. Jim and Rhonda Catanzaro, who were exchanging some equipment at the Comcast office last week, said they used their digital video recorder/high definition television combo package to store parts of the recent Winter Olympics.

"It was easy to do," said Dr. Catanzaro, who admitted they don't use the technology very often.

Mrs. Catanzaro agreed.

"I think that's how we watched the closing ceremonies," she said. "It was great."

Mr. Shook said the On Demand service was an enhancement to the digital cable service, which provided subscribers with a tier of nearly 40 channels above and beyond those available on the preferred basic cable package.

Digital platinum, gold or silver packages, which include the movie multi-channels such as HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, The Movie Channel and Starz with the most current releases, also offer the On Demand service at no additional charge.

Mr. Shook said several intriguing On Demand features have caught subscribers' attention. With a digital converter box on each TV, for instance, a movie or program can be started in the living room or den and continued in the bedroom.

"That's a neat feature," he said. In addition, Mr. Shook said, parental controls allow parents to lock out programming for children at any rating they choose; a PIN system keeps unwanted new release pay-per-view movies from being ordered indiscriminately ; 45 commercial-free channels of music are available at all times; and Weatherscan provides up-to-the-minute local weather at all times.

"It's like having (the Weather Channel's) Local on the 8's continuously," said Tom Bailey, Comcast's director of technical operations.

The local Comcast affiliate will be expanding its On Demand offerings by 50 percent this summer.

That increase will push the programming hours available from 4,000 to 6,000, Mr. Shook said.

To do that, according to Mr. Bailey, Comcast will increase the capacity of its headend system. That system is made up of racks of hard drives and other equipment at the company's Polymer Drive location.

The headend system downloads programming, catches it and programs it into the local company's system, he said. A catcher manager in Knoxville is responsible for making sure all the programming lines up for local subscribers, he said.

"It's a fail-safe system," Mr. Shook said, noting that each hard drive has three backups.

Among the upgrades the local Comcast affiliate has for its On Demand service is local programming.

Next fall, high school football games will be added, Mr. Shook said. Another of many possibilities is Spanish language instruction, he said.

"We want to offer whatever people might find value in," he said.

E-mail Clint Cooper at ccooper@timesfreepress.com

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