If you’re thinking about getting yourself a T-Box DVR, it might be an idea to wait until November – Telstra are promising a special Christmas promotion that will gift you $300 worth of movie downloads.
Considering the box itself costs $299, that’s not a bad deal at all. We’re still waiting on more specifics – whether or not there’s an expiry period for that credit, and when exactly the offer will be available, for a start – but in any case, buying a T-Box this month would be a wasted opportunity for free stuff.
KRS1
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 12:46 PMIsn’t this T-Box supposedly the most unreliable, self-detonating thing in the history of Telstra, with even worse service when it does inevitably fall over? I have seen multi-multi page threads of angry people which scared me well off.
James
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 3:34 PMwhile there have been some issues with the device initially, we are working hard to resolve all of them – and remember, if there IS an issue it will be resolved, even if we have to give you a new box. Also, if you want to cancel the whole thing because you have had a bad experience then we will refund your $$.
Finally, we are releasing a few updates to the T-Box which will double the hard drive, allow foxtel over it, allow another HDD to be connected to it for storage, more VOD content, more live streaming and HD channels + Apps + a more personalised service.
The T-Box is going to get insanly better.
Phil
Monday, October 11, 2010 at 11:30 PMSo James how will they double the hard drive in my existing box. I’m no techno whiz but last time I checked you can’t upgrade memory over the net. Are you going to send me a new box or are you just full of Telstra
adam
Monday, December 6, 2010 at 12:15 AMI agreed to the t=box bundle of the phone on the 28th of october and then they released the 300.00 voucher program . now they say i won’t get it the 300.00 voucher as i didn’t sign up between the 2 of november 2010 and the 24th of jan 2011..it really is wrong….
drew
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 12:52 PMit’s a shame I live behind a CMUX/RIM that limits me to ADSL1 which is no good for T-box … You need ADSL EXterme / ADSL@+ speeds for this media box system …buyer beware…
James
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 3:27 PMTelstra will not let you buy the device if you are not able to recive the right download average speed
Jamie Carl
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 12:55 PMIs that “$300 worth” as valued by the film industry, or by us, the viewers?
James
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 3:32 PMit is $300 to use towards movies download (new release movies cost a little bit more then ones that have been around for a while)
You could use this to watch quite a few free movies; New release movies cost $5.99 to rent for 48 hours on the T-Box, while old movies cost $2.99 or $3.99
At $3 a movie you could watch 100…..
or at $4 you could watch 75
or at $6 you could watch 50.
Also the $300 voucher lasts 3 months, so that would be 17 a month or 25 a month or 35 a month depending on the cost of a movie.
Phil
Monday, October 11, 2010 at 11:26 PMWhat about the loyal customers who signed up at the start and missed out on all these free movies being offered. I was plagued by problems with the first box and the second one still has issues but is okay. They are getting desperate for customers if they are offering $300 and I think existing customers should be offered something to cover the hours spent on the phone to tech support.
Rob
Monday, October 18, 2010 at 2:31 PMSo new customers will get a new & better box & $300 worth of movies? What do existing customers (read Guinea Pigs) get? Or do I just have to keep complaining to get something?
Andrew
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 1:00 PMWho the hell has a TV sideways??
Nick Broughall
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 1:10 PMLol – weird CMS issue squeezing the pic, it’s not actually sideways :)
Andrew
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 5:11 PMNawww, I kinda liked it…
Cameron
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 2:57 PMIt’s too damn hard to mount a 50″ Plasma lengthways on my toilet door!
Sicarius123
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 3:14 PMIf other Telstra offers I’ve had for $300 account credit it’ll be after 3 months you receive the credit.
That’s what’s happened so far with my mobile, landline and adsl2 deals.
James
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 6:44 PMhaha :)
no, the offer will be valid when you purchase the T-Box – you can start using it when you want to (the idea however, is that you would be enjoying it over the school holidays, or at least the children might :P)
Cilla
Sunday, February 27, 2011 at 9:38 PMI purchased my T-Box on the weekend after signing a bundle package with Telstra, and not one thing has gone right. No caller ID, no Adsl connected and someone else has activated my account with their T-Box so I can’t even download a movie. After nearly 2 hours on the phone trying to sort it out, I was given a 1 month Internet credit, and I have to wait for all the above to be activated and sorted out which could take over a week. It would have been good to be offered a $300 movie voucher as the availability of downloading movies was one of the selling points for me (the other was UTUBE and I can’t even watch that). Grr :-(
Simon Reidy
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 3:57 PMI’ll be interested when movies start at $3 to rent, when you are given the option to stream or download, and content is offered in a range of resolutions up to 1080p (with DTS HD sound). Until then I’ll stick to Blu-Ray.
Rick
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 10:38 PMThe real issue is content. Not price. Telstras bigpond media center movies app only has movies that have been on blu ray or DVD for months both to rent at you local vid store or to purchase.
What is the time difference (release date wise) should one expect between the conventional video store vs the t-box?
CaroKelly
Tuesday, October 5, 2010 at 8:31 PMA bit bummed about this as we just received ours last week. We havn’t had any problems yet – fast downloads (on adsl2), easy to connect… not sure what it is that’s making people grumble?
We also have an appleTV which doesn’t compare in reliablilty and speed – though it runs off Wifi which could be why.
The movie selection for tbox downloads is currently a bit limited (compared to itunes or bigpond DVD store) but hoping that will improve… also would love to see an iphone app similar to foxtel iq’s where you can remotely set the box to record tv.
So…No complaints yet! Oh, except that we missed out on $300 worth of movie downloads ;o(
William W. Wakely
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 at 3:19 AMOverall the TBox is great. Every software update has made improvements. The update last week appears to be gold.
If you need a PVR nothing else works so well and easy to drive and you get added features. I would have no issues recommending the TBox. Many Telstra shops will sell them to you for $269.00 so don’t get sucked into paying $299.00 at genuine Telstra shop
dame
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 at 10:46 AMjames can you let us know if this year or next year foxtel will be on the telstra t box thanks little info would help
Shane
Wednesday, October 6, 2010 at 11:21 AMThat’d be right. Telstra lets all early adopters be beta testers then make it better, include more hardware features and offer deals to entice new customers. What do the early adopters that spent $300 on it get as ongoing rewards? jack shit.
Karina
Monday, October 18, 2010 at 12:45 PMT box was great while it was working!! Onto 2nd one and now it’s gone Kaput. I was advised to unplug it and go shopping or do the washing or something and then try it again!!! Didn’t make any difference!!!
captaingrumpy
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 9:28 AMI am sick to death with Telstra. They are a real pain and I’m talking about trying to understand vietnamese when I call them,or push fifteen buttons just to say its a wrong bill. They suck!
We have just gone to Optus and they have bettered everything Telstra ever did. You feel really relieved when you dont have any Telstra products in your home.
frank
Friday, October 22, 2010 at 7:15 PMhi all t-box needs more new channels like fox.sky or a movie channel?? . is foxtel coming over?? and also t-box needs lot more new movies to rent ?? i have tried serching iron man 2 for a mouth and it is not on t-box?? apart from that t-box works very good. keep up the good work.
Erin
Friday, October 29, 2010 at 11:01 PMJust wondering, are the download movies from Bigpond only from particular publishing houses or are all publishing houses included? We have been looking through the movies that we can currently download and there seem to be a lot of big name movies missing while a lot of b-grade movies are available. 20th Century Fox in particular seems to be absent.
If they are only using movies from certain publishing houses, that would have been nice to know beforehand. Looks like we aren’t going to be avoiding using the video store as we had first hoped :(
jacqui
Wednesday, November 3, 2010 at 7:02 PMwe saw it advertised on the tv so we went to a telstra store to get one and they knew nothing about it…… Now I have to go back and show them what I have printed out…. Useless….
peter
Saturday, November 27, 2010 at 12:11 PMHi, just wanted to say i have had a t-box for a week now and i am very happy with it so far, after i had ordered it i found some very negative reviews of it and was starting to get worried about my decision to go with t-box. I had been looking at tivo for a while but the bigpond movies with the no download meter and the $300 of movie vouchers pushed me to t-box. I still havent got the email with the free $300 voucher code yet but is still early days, i like the electronic tv guide, the season pass recording and also the fact that you can prepay for your movies like with a prepay cell phone, if you go to a telstra shop or jb hi fi you can buy vouchers for the movies which i much prefer than paying for them using a plastic card online. The fact that james has said that they will double the hard drive on new t-boxes has me searching to see what size mine is now just to see if i was lucky or unfortunate with my purchase date. And Jacqui, if you can i would get your t-box online instead of a telstra shop, mine was all done in a few minutes and was delivered about 5 days later by courier, im extremely happy and will keep my fingers crossed that it stays that way.
peter
Saturday, November 27, 2010 at 12:28 PMwoops, i have just browsed a few other sites about t-box and reminded me of a few things that i should have included in my first post, firstly i love watching youtube directly on my tv even though the typing with the remote is a little clumbersome especially if you have big fingers, this leads me to a few little critisisms of t-box, none of which really effect the operation but might be advice for telstra when they update the t-box, the remote, i love that it is radio and not infrared, but the keys on it need to be redesigned so that they are easier to use instead of curving in they should be raised in the middle, and the look and feel of the t-box does not do a product of this calibre any favours it looks a bit cheap and plasticy even though it is a high tech great product, maybe a redesign of the actual box would help its image maybe something more sturdy along the lines of a dvd player or a foxtel box, and yes i agree there needs to be more choice with the broadband chanels i have looked at the news chanel as the others dont interest me at all, something like a discovery chanel would be fantastic. These are only observations about the t-box that i hope telstra can find helpful and do not in anyway detract from the actual product and yes i am still extremely happy with my t-box. I watched my first download movie last night and it took about 30 seconds before i was able to start watching it so that was great, so far it is ticking all the right boxes for me and is turning out to be the best purchase i have made this year, i am looking forward to spending a lot of time with t-box over the holiday period.
ADAM
Saturday, December 11, 2010 at 2:21 AMCall the TIO, the RIAA and the police. Arrest Tel$tra – they need to fix the box! it takes 4 hrs to watch a 1.5 hr movie with all the fast forwarding it automatically does you will end up being mixed up with a movie in the wrong context especially if it takes 4.3 hrs to watch Inception that can naturally skip then make u lose the plot….. TIO here i come again!
peter
Saturday, December 11, 2010 at 9:19 PMhi adam, just curious, how long have you had your t-box? i have had mine for about 3 to 4 weeks now, and besides it turning itself off a couple of times i have had no drama with it, and the movies i have watched take about 2 minutes to load before i can start to watch them. Im just wondering if i was lucky and got a bug free box, or more is to come. I have to admit i love my t-box at this stage, but the biggest pitfall is the price of movies and the catalogue available. I realise there is convenience not having to go to the video store, but the same movies on t-box i could get 5 of them for $5 for a week where as t-box is $3.99 each and the new releases are more expensive than the dvd shop, i am tossing up about watching inception on t-box for $5.99 or buying it and owning it from jb hifi for $19. Even though it is a great device, telstra need to get a greater list of movies and make the prices more realistic.
Scott
Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 9:04 AMI’ve had mine about 3 weeks now – it’s started to freeze up a few times when trying to watch their internet channels or youtube, and then after a reset it’s fine (shouldn’t have to do this with a ‘quality’ product). My main question is with the HD movies that you rent – I thought they would come in Dolby Digital sound as they are HD, but they don’t on mine, or have I got it set up wrong? The HD channels have Dolby surround with no probs so I think it’s not a problem with my set up.
Alan Chambers
Saturday, June 4, 2011 at 6:19 PMBeware don’t get the bigpond vouchers. They are prepaid service. I got $100 voucher. I only used 8 movie , $49 worth . I now have no credit left. I rang the Bigpond movie helpdesk and was advise that voucher are only good for 2 months and prepaid service. Now lost $50 dollar. Check the fine print if you can find it.
Daniele
Wednesday, September 14, 2011 at 1:41 PMWhy-oh-why are we taking a step backwards by not having surround sound encoding on the movie downloads ? Who wants to watch the latest movie in stereo ? It decodes 5.1 from encoded free-to-air transmissions, but officially, all the pay-for movie downloads are stereo. Back to driving the the local DVD store for me !!
Catherine
Saturday, April 21, 2012 at 8:16 PMWe signed up for tbox to get football channels .. Terrible choice. Whenever the football is on we are unable to watch due to constant streaming issues ie. pic freezes no sound if we can we disconnect and watch via channel 7. We will be disconnecting our t box. Very disappointing service with constant problems.