Musician Bruce Springsteen once wrote a famous song called &57 Channels (And Nothin& On),& lamenting the lack of interesting television programs despite the number of channels available.

Today the complaint could be that there are now 300 channels and still nothing worth watching at any given time.

But what if the viewer had access to a library of shows and movies, arranged by interest and readily available to watch at any time with just a few button presses on a remote control?

Subscribers to Comcast&s digital cable service will soon have that ability, thanks to a free upgrade coming to cable boxes in the Sacramento area, letting people try their new On Demand service.

The service is as simple to navigate as the other menus on the digital cable service.

Once selecting the On Demand option, viewers can choose from several different categories, including Free Movies, Lifestyle, Kids and Teens, Sports and Fitness and so on.

Most of the programs available at On Demand are free, with a few exceptions. Viewing episodes of popular HBO programs such as &Deadwood,& &Oz& and &The Sopranos& is free, as long as the customer is a subscriber to HBO, a premium channel.

Movies that do cost money are usually $3 to $4 each, depending on whether it&s an older movie or a recent release. Adult movies are also available to order at any time, although they are much more expensive.

Fans of Japanese animation or anime will be pleased by what On Demand has to offer. Anime Network, a channel not yet offered on Comcast&s standard digital cable service, offers the latest anime shows, just released on DVD by ADV Films, broken into several categories, such as Girl Power, Giant Robots and The Bento Box, a mix of Japanese music videos and obscure anime shows.

Anime Selects, a separate program, offers its own selection of anime programming, usually featuring older shows and movies.

Unfortunately for anime purists, the programs are only offered in their English-dubbed versions, so those who want to watch the anime in its original Japanese, will still have to buy the DVDs.

Before Comcast subscribers become too excited, there are several things to note about the service.

Only certain programs and movies are available, not every episode in a series is available all at once and the episodes and movies that are available are only there for a few weeks before being removed and replaced with new programming.

That means people who have just recently received On Demand in their area will have missed many of the earlier episodes of programs available to those who had the service sooner.

Some customers in the Sacramento area already have On Demand service, although not in its final version.

Sean Bryant, a customer account executive for Comcast, said the service has been testing in several areas in the Sacramento area for a few months, and expanding to Roseville in October.

The service has recently expanded to Natomas, Fair Oaks and Citrus Heights.

Bryant said this was done to work out any bugs in the service before fully launching On Demand to all of Sacramento, thereby avoiding the possibility of a deluge of customer support calls.

On Demand content has not yet been added for all channels, as the Tech TV section still remains empty.

Despite having a ways to go before the service is totally complete, many people are pleased with the service and find it hard to be without it.

&(Customers) love it. From the younger generation, the more technically inclined generation & they really do enjoy it,& Bryant said. &Most people who come from other areas where it&s available, when they were coming here, they really missed it. They were asking, &How come we didn&t have it in the Central Valley region?& &

Bryant expects On Demand to expand to the entire Sacramento area within the next month.