Cable TV giant Comcast is planning to launch its own internet TV service.

Known as ‘OnDemand Online’, the service will be launched later in the year and will be showing premium content from the cable networks.

It will be a different service from Hulu though. Hulu shows content from the main networks such as Fox and NBC, and shows it after the initially broadcast on the free to air networks.

The service is expected to be a free service for existing Comcast subscribers and the ‘OnDemand Online’ will be pushed as a premium content service, a level above Hulu. However it is quite probable that Hulu will show the same content at a later date. But noone wants to wait, do they?

It is also a possibility that the online TV content will be available as a seperate service, thereby giving Comcast an online tv option for when cable starts losing more subscribers.

The announcement comes hot on the heels of the news that Hulu has removed its content from TV.com and Boxee leading to all sorts of conspiracy theories. Has Comcast got anything to do with the content removal? Having its own online TV service to protect, it may not want its hit shows streaming anywhere else but its own website.

Whatever the reasons, an internet TV presence is a smart move as the market is expanding at a great rate whilst traditional cable is dwindling at the same time.

Comcast has dismissed this suggestion saying that it has not lost any significant subscribers to cable due to the free TV and movie content available on the internet.

But that isn’t guaranteed forever. So Comcast and its peers are smart to do what they can to keep subscribers happy — and to keep as much cable content as possible out of Hulu’s hands.

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