A growing number of people are watching movies and television online, and some of them have even decided to bypass their cable subscription.

Seeing this trend, the U.S. cable industry is reacting setting up streaming video sites. Industry's obvious goal is to ensure that people stay connected to cable programming, even if they watch the programs on their computers. This initiative is called "TV Everywhere".

Comcast is the first major cable operator to introduce its streaming site. The new service, branded as "Fancast Xfiniy TV", allows watching thousand of television episodes online that were previously unavailable.

Comcast customers log in to the service via Comcast.net or Fancast.com and will have to install a program before using it. Nonsubscribers are blocked.

Partners in the service include A&E, AMC, Discovery Channel, History, TLC and TNT — cable channels that have been generally reluctant to place their shows online for fear of cannibalizing. Also Xfinity will include premium shows that aren't on Hulu.

"There's an astounding amount of content that has not been online before,", explained Comcast.

Overall, this is another big step toward anytime, anywhere media.