With the proliferation of Internet connected set-top devices that enable the streaming of online video to televisions. This move opens up streaming Internet video to a much broader audience than those who watch television and movies on their computers and Netflix—who grew up on a DVD-by-mail model—have been offering streaming video for some time and continue to expand in subscriptions. Such a rapid expansion that its starting to create a reaction amid the other companies in the industry.

According to an article on Wall Street Journal mentions that Netflix subscriptions have risen 52% from last year to 16.9 million subscribers at the end of September. Also, as those subscriptions increase, other cable and paid TV services are seeing a reduction in total subscriptions due to the bite of the poor economy. Their fear, of course, is that many of these subscribers are moving over to much cheaper Internet based services.

Time Warner Inc. said last month it expects its HBO pay-TV service to lose 1.5 million subscribers this year, though it blamed the decline on the poor economy and changes in promotions, not on consumers replacing cable subscriptions with Web video, a practice dubbed "cord-cutting."

Netflix’s growth surge—at a time of weak DVD sales and increasingly fragmented TV audiences—prompts concern among movie and TV studios as well as other technology companies. One big worry is that the company could end up dominating the electronic distribution of movies and TV the way Apple Inc.’s iTunes Store dominates music.

To prevent that, entertainment and technology companies are exploring plans to outflank Netflix with their own offerings.

Netflix has shown explosive growth and numerous other cable and video companies are now scrambling to catch up. Amazon.com intends to offer their own Netflix-like video streaming service bundled with their own Amazon Prime shipping (now there’s an interesting incentive.) Media companies have looked to Microsoft and Sony—both of whom enable Netflix streaming on their video game consoles as set-top-boxes—have looked to the corporations to distribute their media.

Also, OnLive—who do streaming videogame delivery—a startup that has a major investor in Time Warner has been looking into providing an alternative. They intend to start offering their own subscription service for movies and television next year using their already existing infrastructure.

Media companies are noting that Netflix’s towering growth gives them a gigantic advantage in distribution and that eventually it will be difficult to provide streaming media with them vacuuming up all of the licenses. "I think ‘concerned’ is a gross understatement," said Mr. Perlman, CEO of OnLive. "There’s a snowball effect. At some point they [Netflix] have so much content, if you want to get your stuff distributed you have to go with them."

Microsoft themselves has shown signs that they’re pondering their own streaming Internet-TV service that will compete with Netflix. Increasingly, Internet enabled devices that connect to televisions are becoming video media distribution devices (game consoles, WebTV, DVR, et cetera.)

As we see these multiply the cable Internet-TV industry will really take off and anyone who isn’t with Netflix, or managed to hook into the same consumer base, will be left behind in the dust.