At the risk of sounding like official paid editorial for the popular streaming service, the Netflix cable companies making it into a ‘real TV channel’ have now made it so easy to find their content, it’s becoming another word for the medium, like when people started saying iPhone and iPod instead of phone and mp3 player.

Netflix

This deal means that the Netlix app will be added to many set top boxes across America, for those who use RCN, Grande Communications and Atlantic Broadband. Accessing Netflix will then be like switching the channel. We’ll let the people behind it explain it better…

"We're making Netflix a channel on our lineup and in our channel guides," said David Isenberg, chief marketing officer for Atlantic Broadband. "If you're an RCN customer, perhaps in the D.C. area you would pick up your remote control, you would tune to Channel 450, and there you'd find Netflix. You'd select it and that'll launch the Netflix app. Literally, watching Netflix is as easy as changing the channel."

More: How Did Amazon Beat Netflix to The Sopranos, The Wire, Girls?

The key behind this deal is the ease at which customers and potential customers can switch between their normal television device and Netflix, which streams content like their hugely successful, original show, House of Cards starring Kevin Spacey. Having everything on one box instead of switching between remotes and input devices is a real pull. Again, Netflix are integrating themselves into everyday life. 

"The entire cable television market is in the process off reinventing itself," said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecom analyst, via The Washington Post. "Watching television on TV used to be the entire pie. Now it's just one slice of it.”