Foxtel Australia today announced “Foxtel New Generation”, with a raft of new features scheduled for a November 15 launch, but downloadable content will be fast-tracked to kick off from Thursday, October 1.
“Download” was the word that kept rising above the bulleted list of new features, with Foxtel Download packaged free for Foxtel subscribers. Find out more about it here. Foxtel CEO Kim Williams said there would be 400 hours of content available to download at launch and that this would increase in the coming months.
Pricing for Foxtel Next Generation subscriptions ranges from $72 to $135, with plenty of new options to consider.
These are:
30 new channel choices including themed movie channels; new sports and doco channels; 12 new channel brands; 15 High Definition Channels including four dedicated HD sports channels and six HD movie channels; eight new timeshift channels; 10 new HD channels; a new movie service with 16 dedicated movie channels; new iQ value packs including one with an iQ for free; Foxtel Download; a new Foxtel guide for iQ and updated guide for iQ2; new search features with iSuggest for iQ and iQ2 subscribers; Record Me; a new Foxtel Box Office, Movies on Demand, with up to 40 recent release movies; and new localised services for Sky News and an improved Weather Active.
Usability features that stood out were Record Me, which makes it a cinch to program a recording by responding to an icon screened during a promo, and iSuggest, which brings movie posters in an iTunes-like interface as a way of making easier choices of content, which are categorised as: Must See, Sports, Knowledge & Adventure, Drama & Lifestyle, Kids & Music, and HD.
From October 1, all Foxtel iQ2 set-top units will start receiving a software upgrade delivering new features to the onscreen Foxtel iQ Guide. From November 1, the same software upgrade will be delivered progressively to all Foxtel iQ set-top-units.
Foxtel went to some lengths to launch Next Generation, staging a high-def multimedia-palooza in Stage 2 at Fox Studios in Sydney’s Moore Park and introducing its stable of young stars that will form the “faces” of Foxtel across its new channel brands.
But after it was all over, it was Williams’ words about Foxtel Download that were the easiest to carry away: “Now, Foxtel is not only about when and what you watch, but where you watch it”.
Amen to that. Bring it on.
JB
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 2:41 PMSounds fairly gimped to me.
Time limited downloads that only work in their own software player? No thanks.
Josh
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 4:57 PMWindows only too. No mac support at all.
attila
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 2:44 PMI assume you would have mentioned it if it were the case – but any suggestion/hints about them teaming up with an ISP to make it quota free?
Adam
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 3:42 PMi reckon iinet and there awesome freezone will be straight on to this
Normandy
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 5:42 PMI am a foxtel subscriber and I say yawn! No support for Mac users = Fail, metered content with your ISP = Fail. No up to date SCI FI channel = Fail. NO update date shows from the USA? Fail! all in all, TOTAL FAIL!
Foxtel is for people who dont know how to download, or live their life with the outcome of a sport game. For all the intelligent people, they are doing other more constrcutive things, AND DOWNLOADING their shows on their Macs!
ravn0s
Tuesday, September 29, 2009 at 6:24 PMcant see why it should’nt be quota free for bigpond users since telstra owns half of foxtel.
jno
Wednesday, September 30, 2009 at 12:36 AMI just got back after living for 3 years in the UK and it looks like all they are doing is playing catch-up with SKY, which is essentially Foxtel in the UK. They have had this service for years – and although it works great IF YOU HAVE A PC NOT A MAC it is a great service, but all channels offer this in the UK, BBC iPlayer is the best of them – shits all over Sky (and what this sounds like from Foxtel) If only they would follow the lead of the BBC and make their content available to everyone not just PC users.
Having said that extra channels will be most welcome as I was staggered to see how few channels there are here in Aus compared to the UK for virtually the same cost! About time they did something
Ross Johnson
Sunday, October 4, 2009 at 4:27 PMI’ve tried it a bit more now. It just downloads wmv files, so Windows Media Player seems to handle them fine. I would assume anything else that handles wmv would also work. In terms of playing back on your preferred portable media device, there appears to be software available that makes the transcoding of the downloaded wmv file pretty simple.