The Sopranos

Home Box Office and Comcast are partnering on a digital-content deal that will bring award-winning television shows and movies to cable-TV subscribers.

As an added value to Comcast's HBO and Cinemax customers, content from both channels will be available as part of the company's On Demand Online trial. On Demand Online is a free service that expands the number of top-rated TV choices available online to Comcast cable customers.

Maybe Tony Soprano was onto something. As the lead mobster in "The Sopranos," a longtime U.S. television series, he and his crew often turned to prepaid mobile phones, presumably to avoid wiretaps.

But now these pay-as-you-go phones are winning over fans for different reasons -- recession-battered consumers are buying them as a way to cut costs and avoid the lengthy contracts and occasional billing surprises that come with traditional mobile phone plans.

ABC has a new Webcast deal, this time with Internet television service Veoh. Under the arrangement, full-length episodes of Desperate Housewives, Lost and Ugly Betty will be available on Veoh's Web site. The deal is only the second time ABC has licensed content to an independent vendor.

Other networks, notably NBC, have moved much more aggressively into the strange new land in which networks produce content for broadcast, then license other sites to replay it. NBC and Fox joined forces last year to create Hulu.com, a portal for the networks' content.