• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, January 21, 2008

Starting tomorrow, Time Warner's HBO will make a slate of its programs available on broadband on a test basis in parts of Wisconsin.

The service, HBO on Broadband, which will only be available to subscribers, is expected to offer around 600 titles each month, including some of the channel's most popular old shows like "Sex and the City" and "The Sopranos." Customers will be able to download shows and watch them at their convenience.

With this move, HBO is poised to join a growing roster of companies that are making their television shows available on the Web, at destinations ranging from network-owned sites to the major portals to video-sharing hubs to peer-to-peer sites.

Yet, with all this bandwidth-hogging video now online or coming online, there are real concerns about whether people will be able to watch it. Consider, Time Warner Cable is poised to start testing a pricing system that will charge broadband users based on how much they download per month. The cheapest plan will allow people to download five gigabytes -- which would be eaten up by around two standard definition movies.

There's no question that distributing video online offers the same sort of efficiencies that have driven the success of online music stores like iTunes. But it also seems likely that bandwidth concerns need to be addressed for the market for downloadable video to grow.