Video on demand puts you in control.

Byline: Lewis Taylor The Register-Guard

Digital cable subscribers in Eugene-Springfield may have noticed some extra icons on their TV screens. Comcast unveiled its Video On Demand service this past week amid not much fanfare.

The service allows viewers to select movies and programs from a list of menus on their TV screens and then pause, rewind and fast-forward them like a DVD. The basic service is free to digital cable subscribers, but movies from the VOD library cost extra.

Like TiVo and other digital video recorders, Video On Demand allows viewers to watch programs on their own schedule. It's part of the latest wave in what the industry is calling "appointment viewing" or "time shifting," and it threatens to make words such as "prime time" meaningless as more viewers watch programs whenever they want.

Because the VOD service requires a high-speed, two-way link that satellite can't provide, the cable companies are hoping it will give them a leg up on the competition.

As a recent TiVo convert, I was anxious to try out VOD, and Comcast set up a free test drive. In what I'm guessing was a conspiracy to ruin my weekend, a technician hooked me up with way more cable channels than I needed, put a remote control in my hand, then grabbed his orange safety cone off the street and drove away.

Essentially, VOD mirrors a cable subscription, meaning you get, say, only Starz programs on demand if you subscribe to a Starz package. It's safe to say that few viewers with a social life will ever have the ultra platinum package that I had, so my test drive wasn't exactly real world, but it was fun.

I'll start with what I liked about VOD. First off, the programs available on the premium channels such as HBO and Showtime are, as the HBO character Ali G. would say, "da plop." Not only can you watch episodes of "Da Ali G. Show" or catch Dave Chappelle's new one-hour comedy program on Showtime, but you also can choose from a wide selection of free movies.

The programs load quickly and are fairly easy to access once you learn where to look for them.

For example, if you want a show from the Home & Garden TV network, you've got to look under the "Lifestyle" category. Don't go looking for aerobics videos under "Fitness" - you'll only find yoga tapes from the Wisdom Channel.

In fact, there were no exercise videos in any of the VOD menus that I saw, which brings me to what I didn't like about VOD: The content in the nonpremium section was a real mixed bag. I liked the instructional segments on the Food Network and the Home & Garden channel. Both seemed like a great use of the technology, but other VOD menus offered a hodgepodge of shows that looked a lot like leftovers and freebies.

Instead of offering the "Daily Show" on a daily basis (what a concept), Comedy Central was serving up highlight segments and MTV was showing vintage "Real World" episodes.

Although VOD was relatively easy to use, I found it to be less intuitive than my TiVo or my co-worker's DISH DVR system. I also didn't like that the system saved only programs with a running time longer than an hour.

If I paused a program and walked away for five minutes, I had to navigate the maze of menus and re-select the show I had already chosen.

The Comcast publicist told me VOD programming was still a work in progress, which explains the "Frayed Nerves" yoga video I found in the fitness section or the fact that there still is no ESPN programming or network programming.

Comcast plans to continue offering more and more VOD content, such as the impressive array of highlight reels that launched this week on the NFL Network, and I'm sure VOD will only get better.

Until then, I'll stick to my TiVo.