The pay TV service operated by joint venture FOXTEL will be available through Telstra’s T-box media centre, as a result of an agreement announced today by the two companies.
Although pricing, packages and the full channel line-up have not been revealed yet, Telstra said in a statement its customers would be able to watch some of Foxtel’s best channels, such as Discovery, FOX8, FOX Sports Play, Movie One and so on. Telstra chief executive officer David Thodey said the agreement would advantage T-Box users, offering more content at an affordable price.
“For many customers it will open up an exciting world of affordable internet-delivered home entertainment,” he said. “And there’s more to come for the T-Box in 2011, with interactive features such as BigPond Sports Game Analyser, games and increased integration with the T-Hub and other devices”.
Currently the T-Box provides access to more than 2000 films for download through BigPond Movies. When the agreement becomes effective, the T-Box will be enriched by 30 of Foxtel’s channels that will be streamed directly via either a BigPond ADSL or cable broadband services. Customers will be able to enjoy the expanded choice of entertaining channels as long as they live in metropolitan areas where FOXTEL services are already being distributed.
In return, Telstra BigPond will become FOXTEL’s preferred internet services provider and extend unmetered FOXTEL via broadband content for BigPond ADSL and cable customers to other Telstra-supported devices.
Foxtel chief executive Kim Williams said the partnership with Telstra offered FOXTEL — itself a joint venture between Telstra, News Corporation and Consolidated Media Holdings — an opportunity to reach “the broadband space”, where consumers are heading at increasing speed. Moreover, he said access to Telstra’s T-Box would ensure Foxtel to adapt to new ways of delivery its services, while responding to the needs of those consumers who are looking for services on demand.
“FOXTEL continues to invest in innovative new ways to deliver FOXTEL, to ensure consumers have attractive choice and personal control over their television viewing and options, supported with simple to use intuitive technologies,” he said. “With this new offer we are able – through Telstra – to reach new customer segments”.
Foxtel signed a similar contract last year with Microsoft’s Xbox 360, when the television provider started to expand its presence in the market of television and video on demand. More recently, Optus signed a contract to offer Foxtel’s HD services to its customers.
Image credit: Telstra
Awesome! Telstra have manage to combine two overpriced services I have absolutely no interest in, into the one buggy and ugly box!
I dunno, Simon — have you actually tried the T-Box? It’s streets ahead of the competition, especially the fetchTV service, in my opinion; and it just keeps on getting new features. I don’t personally watch Foxtel (even on my Xbox 360), but I know a lot of people that do.
In all honesty, no I haven’t tried one personally, but I have a mate who got one when they first came out, and eventually returned it as he was so unhappy with the performance, stability and lack of HD content. He said the entire thing was a frustrating beta experience.
The only IPTV service I have trialled in my own home was FetchTV with Internode and it was awful. I retuned it after one month as the picture quality from the internet channels was on par with VHS. They only have one 720p HD demo channel, which similar to the old Nine HD demo channel is simply a looped video of pretty scenery (yay). This is one of the biggest reasons I’m looking forward to the NBN, as more bandwidth is a must to deliver quality content via the net.
I’ve got no interest in most of the content available on Foxtel, but in fairness I do like to see the competition heating up a bit in the IPTV space, so if the T-box has been updated to the point where it’s now stable I should probably check it out. However I live in Hobart, where Austar has the pay TV market, and they are utter shit in comparison. It pisses me off that Foxtel via the X-Box 360 and now the T-Box wont be available in areas that cant currently receive Foxtel via cable or satellite. The only thing I could receive from the T-Box are the exitsting lame Bigpond channels.
Having worked in audio/visual for years, and being a Blu-Ray addict, my primary interest is in picture and audio quality, so to be even vaguely interested in these IPTV services there would have to movie channels available in 720p at a decent bit-rate + 5.1 sound. I believe this is the case for some Foxtel channels now, but I doubt very much there will be the bandwidth to many HD channels via the T-Box (correct me if I’m wrong).
“so to be even vaguely interested in these IPTV services there would have to movie channels available in 720p at a decent bit-rate + 5.1 sound. I believe this is the case for some Foxtel channels now, but I doubt very much there will be the bandwidth to many HD channels via the T-Box (correct me if I’m wrong).”
In the case of on-demand television and multicast it is entirely possible to deliever this content in real time. The bandwidth requirements for a (decent) 720p picture with 5.1 sound is 4.5Mbps. The bandwidth requirements for a real high quality stream of the same quality apporaches 8Mbps. Both which are aviable on the average ADSL2+ connection or Cable connection (but not all) provided there is enough backhaul to deliever this rate consistantly (not so much of a problem with multicasting).
The reason the NBN will improve the situation in this market is thricefold:
1) The CIR achivable will be much higher, thus there will be less change of your connecting being unable to cope with the signal due to not getting enough speed, or backhaul congestion, etc.
2) The NBN provides multicasting abilities within the network design which greatly simplifies the deployment of mutlicasted services.
3) The ability to deliever multiple streams per household (i.e. watch more than one program at one tiem) and deliever 1080p content, which only the very top tier ADSL2+ connections can handle at this stage.
Of course, anyone here is right to point out you don’t NEED the NBN to deleiver FetchTV and other on-demand, or multicast services, however it open up the market considerbaly and make it easier to provide higher quality content.
I agree with most of what you have to say apart from:
“The bandwidth requirements for a (decent) 720p picture with 5.1 sound is 4.5Mbps”
That’s an entirely subjective number, and a very low bit-rate even when using modern compression codecs (which most of them don’t – relying instead on aging MPEG2)..
Trust me when I say that there is a lot of disagreement over what constitutes a “decent” picture with H.264, as what might be acceptable to yours eyes at 4.5mbps is certainly not to mine. Compressing to that bit-rate (which s often done with Blu-Ray torrents) provides a decent picture in terms of stationary sharpness, but there is a ton of fine detail missing, and compression artefacts galore whenever there is motion, film grain or complex action on screen.
As correctly pointed out by George Ou in this Zdnet article:
“The only time 4 mbps 720p will look better than 8 mbps 480i is when the video on the screen is almost entirely stationary or it’s a low-complexity video such as animation movies. Under most normal circumstances, the low bit-rate 720p so-called “HD” video will be inferior though many companies are betting that consumers won’t know any better. “
And this is only 720p we’re talking about, 18-20mbps min is what I consider to deliver an acceptable 1080/24p picture. Obviously not possible until the NBN is a reality.
“That’s an entirely subjective number”
Exactly, a lot of people, who don’t know any better, get the 720p at 4.5Mbps streams and consider them “decent”… I personally don’t, but for a large percentage of people it’s apparently good enough. I would much pefer 8Mbps streaming… hence why I said:
“The bandwidth requirements for a real high quality stream of the same quality apporaches 8Mbps.”
And since we’re picture junkies, we’ll opt for that won’t we? ;)
Perceptions about picture quality are somewhat problematic. Rememeber the 60fps is bad problem that came out a few years ago because of 60fps personal cameras?
Sorry, I actually missed the bit you said about 8mbp being required for a high quality 720p stream. You are quite right that 8mbps is a more reasonable frame rate for 720p. Although I’d go a bit further and say 12mbps is ideal for top quality 720p. It also depends what frame rate we’re talking about, as film based content (24p) takes up a lot less room than fast motion progressive video (50 or 60p).
My concern is, will any provider ever be generous enough to allow that much bandwidth for a single channel, rather than compressing two low bi-rate channels into the same space? (which is what ALL of our television networks have down with their horrible over-compressed FTA channels).
My only hope is that there will eventually be a business that recognises there is a demand for premium high definition content online, as I will happily pay extra for higher quality streams.
Perceptions about picture quality are somewhat problematic. Rememeber the 60fps is bad problem that came out a few years ago because of 60fps personal cameras?
Sorry, not sure what you’re referring to here. I have a lot to say when it comes to frame rates, but I’ll let you elaborate first :)
My only hope is that there will eventually be a business that recognises there is a demand for premium high definition content online, as I will happily pay extra for higher quality streams.
Have you considered, I dunno, starting said business yourself? :)
Sorry, not sure what you’re referring to here. I have a lot to say when it comes to frame rates, but I’ll let you elaborate first :)
There was a fad back a few years ago about providing 60fps video on camcorders. Made a huge marketing deal out of it, however it backfired, because people began associated “60fps” with blurry camera work, etc, basicly everything you can come to except from an amatur videographer. This, I was told by a few friends as passionate about video as yourself (could have just been their own resentment) meant that very few television or movie providers would release content at 60fps, and as such the defacto standard has become 24fps, despite the fact that, especially for fast paced action movies, 60fps would look way better.
Not sure how accruate my friend’s musings are, but I do remember the “60fps” camcorders he is refering to, and the crappy home videos as well. :P
Have you considered, I dunno, starting said business yourself? :)
Sure! Would you like to fund it? :)
There was a fad back a few years ago about providing 60fps video on camcorders. Made a huge marketing deal out of it, however it backfired, because people began associated “60fps” with blurry camera work, etc, basicly everything you can come to except from an amatur videographer. This, I was told by a few friends as passionate about video as yourself (could have just been their own resentment) meant that very few television or movie providers would release content at 60fps, and as such the defacto standard has become 24fps, despite the fact that, especially for fast paced action movies, 60fps would look way better.
I think I know what you’re referring to. Given 24fps has been with us since the 1930s, the “blurry filmy look” we all know and love is what we associate with film and drama, and as the frame rate increases, so does the realism, so everything gets that “shot on amateur video” look you’re referring to, which can then ruin the suspension of disbelief. However people get used to it over time, and this is an issue only in the film industry. There is a big push from a lot of directors towards using formats like 48p (already in use for many IMAX productions) as it opens up a whole new ways of shooting fast motion when you have an extra 24fps to play with.
It would be fantastic to see sporting events shot and transmitted in 720/50p rather than 1080/50i, as fast motion events benefit hugely from that extra resolution under motion. It also eliminates all jaggies, line flicker and other interlaced nasties. 720p is also much easier to encode in real-time to MPEG2 (and MPEG4) and uses far less bandwidth, meaning all the macro-blocking we see now with free to air sporting events would be eliminated.
I’m not sure what you mean by linking 60p to a consumer format fad though. The only company I remember that really pushed the standard definition progressive format (576p50 here and 480p60 in the states) was JVC, and I remember there was a big marketing campaign behind it, trying to educate people on the benefits of interlaced vs progressive video. It then kind of died away as 57650i has remained the standard definition format for the majority of cheap camcorders. However video has always been shot at a high frame or field rate (whether it’s progressive or interlaced, the motion has the same smoothness and general appearance to it). I’m excluding the latest trend of 720p24 and 720p30 formats we’re seeing from our smartphones and other smaller digital devices. From what I’ve read 720p30 is only an interim format, (mainly to save on storage space) and there’s a lot of new devices like the Flip Ultra HD which now shoot at full 50p.
There’s no question that thanks to a next generation 1080p sensors, Tegra 3, and the latest OMAP Texas Instruments and and Cortex chipsets, 1080p60 video will start to become the standard consumer video format as early as Q1 2012.
I find it amusing that my iPhone 4 already shoots superior quality footage to what I see from our local WIN news broadcaster :)
LOL @ Simon.
The big question here is about metering. When Foxtel on Xbox was announced it came with a nasty sting that all content would be metered. The current Bigpond media downloads are un-metered for Telstra customers, but will it be the same for Foxtel on T-Box? I hope so, because hopefully (so much hope, right now) that will lead to unmetered Foxtel on Xbox… eventually…
“In return, Telstra BigPond will become FOXTEL’s preferred internet services provider and extend unmetered FOXTEL via broadband content for BigPond ADSL and cable customers to other Telstra-supported devices.”
Well provided the servers that service Xbox and T-Box are the same (I see no reason why they wouldn’t be) then you can assume, if you are on BigPond, that your Foxtel service will not be metered. I would want to hear it from the horse’s (Telstra’s) mouth first through. :)
My mistake… *goes and gets another coffee*
Agreed. One can never assume these things.
I wouldn’t hold your breath waiting for unmetered downloads on Xbox 360 — but I’m sure the T-Box FOXTEL will be unmetered, judging by Telstra’s past form.
Well it all depends on the metering system they utlise. If, like Internode, it is on a per connection basis (i.e. if this connection is to this IP, it isn’t metered, or more precisely used traffic is “rebated”) then provided the Xbox can be configured to connect to the same servers that service the Telstra T-Box, then it will be unmereted. Since this is the simplest way to provide unmetereted traffic I would assume that this is how they provide it.
However, if they use some strange metering where the T-Box connects via a VPN or some other method, and they measure that traffic directly… which is possible, just complicated, and… kinda pointless considering they already have a system to provide unmetered traffic in place.
The realist in me is very much cannibalizing the optimist on this one.
Any Telstra shareholders who still doubt that the value of their holding will double once the NBN gets going should seek professional help.
And that probably includes the editor of the Australian (if he actually believes any of the politically-driven anti-NBN guff in his rag).
“Customers will be able to enjoy the expanded choice of entertaining channels as long as they live in metropolitan areas where FOXTEL services are already being distributed.”
What’s the point of offering this over ADSL services, when they’re only going to offer it where you can already GET Foxtel via Cable anyway? You’d think the point of this would be to expand their customer base beyond the cable limitations of the big cities, not just to offer the same service to the same people a slightly different way.
The assumption there is that you can only get FOXTEL via cable providers, which is in fact false. FOXTEL is oftered, in areas where HFC is not offered, by Satalite. In such areas they may be able to get ADSL with the minimum bandwith requirements (which I recall are in the order of 4.5Mbps) but not actually get Cable.
“What’s the point of offering this over ADSL services, when they’re only going to offer it where you can already GET Foxtel via Cable anyway? You’d think the point of this would be to expand their customer base beyond the cable limitations of the big cities, not just to offer the same service to the same people a slightly different way.”
You’ve completely missed the point of the statement that it will only be available in metro areas. Foxtel can only deliver their service within the areas agreed upon with Austar and that hasn’t changed with IPTV services like X-Box and T-Box. Austar has exclusive distribution to Foxtel content in their areas (even though they are hopeless at delivering new products and don’t yet support IPTV delivery services).
The sooner Austar gets bought out by Foxtel or drops dead the better off all regional/rural people will be in finally getting access to all the new product delivery options that Foxtel provides in the metro areas
If Foxtel doesn’t need to sent out a guy (‘truck roll’ as the US telcos call it) to do the cable/satellite install.. then they’ve saved themselves some money (which won’t be passed onto the consumer of course)
How does the t-box compare to a roku box?
Vastly different services.
Roku: Streams internet video services (NetFlix, Amazon Video On Demand). Not available in Australia. Content not available in Australia.
T-Box: Streams BigPond internet video services (BigPond Movies, BigPond TV, now Foxtel). Has full tuner/PVR functionality with EPG.
Telstra Please take note “Austar is a crap service” and once again screwing loyal non metro ADSL customers ,stuff those slack over priced mongrels and let ALL your valued full service regional customers have access to Foxtel on our TBox. Thank you. (What is that load of duds called “Austar going to do? they are just a toothless broke bunch with overpriced poor content and rapidly declining customers .)
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