Foxtel Download. 10 Things You Should Know
In principle, the idea of legal movie and TV show downloads from Foxtel is a welcome one, because it paves the way for the market to grow. So while there’s room for a lot of improvement, the best news here is that there’s room in the first place. For improvement. In the meantime, here’s 10 things you should know about the service, complete with suckage ratings.
1. It’s free for subscribers. If you are a Foxtel customer, you qualify.
Suckage factor? 1-star suckage. It’s a value-add. And an OK one at that. Perhaps in the future, Foxtel will branch out as a VOD service, independent of pay subscriptions. That would be better.
2. You must use the Foxtel player. After registering, you download the player to, err… manage your downloads.
Suckage factor? 3-star suckage. On the one hand, we can understand that the player would lock in your usage of the download and that Foxtel has an obligation to protect copyright and respect licensing arrangements and so on. On the other hand, what if the player sucks? What if you would just prefer that it dovetailed with your preferred media manager? Tough.
3. Mac-using Foxtel subscriber? You’re out of luck. The player is Windows only.
Suckage factor? 5-star suckage. No explanation required.
4. Downloaded content will expire. Foxtel states that: “…content does expire, depending on the licensing agreement for each individual program”.
Suckage factor? 3-star suckage. Confusion may reign. Program “A” expires in 7 days. Program “B” expires in 14 days. I have to track this? That said, you can watch a program or movie as many times as you like within 7 days of the initial viewing. Because you want to watch sitcom re-runs 100 times in 7 days.
5. Foxtel Box Office. The only applicable charge is for Foxtel Box Office pay-per-view movies, which cost $5.50.
Suckage factor? 2-star suckage. FBO’s pay-per-view is a well-established service. I just have a problem with Foxtel saying that Foxtel Download is a free service, then slugging you for FBO. Bait and switch, anyone? Well, perhaps not… after all, they are being up front about it.
6. Huge selection of programming. 38 channels, more than 400 hours of TV programming and movies to choose from.
Suckage factor? 0-suckage. Lots of content. More than you could download. What’s to complain about? Add three stars if the content sucks.
7. 24-hour support. Available via the Foxtel Download site. Instant messaging Live Chat service from noon to midnight. From midnight to noon, help via email.
Suckage factor. Nil. Fair enough.
8. Five new Download-only channels. Showtime Family, Showtime Drama, Movie Action, Movie Drama, and Movie Comedy.
Suckage factor? Nil. They’re bringing something extra to the table for downloaders. Can’t complain about that. Add 1 star if these “new channels” are just re-badged existing channels.
9. “Amazing Quality”. The Foxtel Download Player plays back sound and picture quality equivalent to Foxtel broadcast quality.
Suckage factor. 1-star suckage. But only because there are no details on bit-rate and resolution. So we’ll see about that.
10. Download at your own expense. You will use your own bandwidth to download. On your own broadband account.
Suckage factor? 4-star suckage. Suddenly, free is not free. If you aim to download even a portion of the aforementioned 400+ hours of content, you’re going to use a large part of whatever monthly download limit you may have in place with your ISP. Here’s where the most room for improvement lies, and we wouldn’t be surprised to see ISPs, especially Telstra, come on board with an unmetered service. Our good friends at Lifehacker have an interesting take on this, which you can check out here.
Tomorrow, Foxtel Download will go live. I don’t have Foxtel. And I use a Mac. So I’m down on two counts. PC-using subscribers should let us know how it unfolds for them.
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Comments
oh come on! downloadable content in Australia is completely useless if it’s metered, especially this sort of content
10 will effectively be a deal breaker for most people
I’ve given it a go. I have Foxtel through Telstra, and Bigpond, so both my Foxtel costs and Bigpond are on the exact same bill. So I really can’t see why I should use up quota for this download, yet I can download to my IQ2 for free…and surely that IQ2 downloads terabytes per month over the same cable, right?
I’m also waiting on someone to figure out how to get the content onto other devices, because my PMP is my phone, that’s what I need to watch it on.
will definitely try it out first thing tomorrow.
just hoping telstra’s gona make it unmetered, otherwise there’s not much point to it.
Im with telstra for adsl2+. only 25gb a month for $99.
surely they gotta come up with something ey???
How are they planning on stopping people from splitting the cost. ie one uses the traditional set top box and someone at another location uses the download service? eg My sister has foxtel but not the internet.
“Because you want to watch sitcom re-runs 100 times in 7 days.”
um, isn’t that pretty much half of foxtels channels summed up right there…..
No Mac support = no go for me.
I’m really disappointed this is the case, I don’t want to have to boot into Windows just to watch some TV.
Me too. It’s a total deal breaker.
Not so much a deal breaker, as an incentive to continue pirating.
Tell ya what, if we could get Foxtel rather than Austar in Tassie it might be cool, particularly because I’m in an area where I should be able to connect to the NBN in a few months time (they’re laying cable right at this minute).
Elly and Dom, although Mac users seem to be the most vocal, you still make up a small percentage of the market. Get a PC if you want to use what everyone else is using.
Nick, it’s all well and good to say “Get a PC if you want to use what everyone else is using.” and that Mac users are a minority… Except that I’d wager Mac users have, by definition, a larger desire to spend money on legally purchased digital content than the market share of Mac computers would suggest.
I do not use foxtel yet as I have no desire to be tied into monthly set fees for whatever content they dream up which is still littered with advertising. Give us pay per view on demand per title advertisment free, and I’ll spend bucket loads.
I can rent/purchase on the iTunes store but the titles availible in Australia are very spartan and average.
By Foxtel shutting out Mac users, they’re shutting out a large portion of the market that would pay for digital movie downloads, and not just grab them of pirate bay.
Well said Nick.
How is it a deal breaker? its a bonus for people with foxtel? If you didn’t already have foxtel i can’t imagine this addition being enough to sway anyone in getting it?
this has been avaiable in the UK for several years on sky,english version of foxtel. But it works there as sky offers unlimited broadband with there packages
until that happens here majority of VOD is pointless !
From Foxtel Website: 64-bit version of Windows is not supported.
I guess the Foxtel people think we like repeats, run win3.1 and have never heard of a Mac.
No windows 7 support pfft
As someone whop has actually downloaded the foxtel player, downloaded 2 programs and watched the majority of these programs, i feel that I can make a comment on this service.
1. Bigpondf does meter teh download.
2. The player sucks – if you start watching the program before it is fully downloaded, then when the download finishes, you have to go back to the start odf the program and watch it from sceratch – very annoying.
3. For whatever reason, the fast forward / rewind buttons do not work – in fact, if you do manage to press the rewind butotn, it goes back to the start of the program – very annoying.
More improvements needed with this player – urgently!
just picked up a tip – you can play the downloaded fiel in windows media player – seems to be a better option to me. Much better controls – not reduction in quality.
To Nick that said get another PC.. id rather drop a bar stool on my nuts