It was the truly 'on demand' aspect of it. Before that, the best most people could do was get a Tivo and time-shift programming which the cable companies fough

It was the truly 'on demand' aspect of it. Before that, the best most people could do was get a Tivo and time-shift programming which the cable companies fought hard (and lost) to stop.[1] Cable TV's version of 'on demand' up to that point was for customers to tune in at the scheduled time your movie was airing and press the buy button. Then services like Netflix came along and said 'just come to our website and watch anything in our catalog whenever you want.' [1] Anyone today with cable service might notice how you get your Tivo functionality from set-top boxes supplied by the cable company. That's the same thing they're trying to do with streaming. They're not so much against it as trying to buy time to build out their own services to compete.