Well, it’s only taken forever, but Foxtel has officially made its play to take over rival payTV operator Austar. More »
There’s a small percentage of the population that’s going to miss out on fibre as the NBN rolls out around the country, and that percentage is going to get wireless. That rollout took a big step forward today according to Mitchell Bingeman at the The Australian, with NBN Co purchasing spectrum from Pay TV operator Austar. More »
One of the biggest problems with the Foxtel Download service that launched last year was that it only worked on 32-bit Windows machines, which meant Mac users and 64-bit geeks missed out. Austar have learnt that lesson, launching their Austar Anywhere download service as a browser-based solution to online video. More »
If you’ve got a DVR set up as part of your home theatre (and you should – it’s almost 2010 fer-cryin’-out-loud!) you’ll know that those things are always sucking up juice. Even in standby mode, they’re power hungry, ready to jump into action at a moment’s notice to record something for you. Well, Foxtel and Austar have decided to “invest millions of dollars” to improve their set top boxes (DVR or not) so that they are a lot more efficient and suck less power. They’ve even signed an agreement with the government to “make” them follow through with it. More »
A source close to Austar has seen fit to send us some (as yet unconfirmed) details of the upcoming HD MyStar service in Australia. It sounds pretty decent… More »
All you city-dwellers out there – spare a thought for your poor, unfortunate rural brethren. For while you dine on the feast of High Definition delights afforded to you from Foxtel HD and the free-to-air TV channels, they have to rely on Austar, which has decided to take the “slow and steady and maybe not at all” approach to HD.
According to Australian IT today, Austar CEO John Porter has stated that launching HD channels on Austar probably won’t happen any time soon, as they are struggling to find a financial model that will actually make them money from new subscribers.
Although – just to confuse us all – he then stated that they will probably still release a HD-capable PVR in the 3rd quarter of 2009, although they may not accompany the hardware with any HD programming.
According to Australian IT, Austar’s next DVR box will not only feature an ethernet port, but it will let you use it for downloading IP video onto the unit. The box, which is due out later this year, will also feature a USB port and HD tuners.
Foxtel’s new iQ2 box also features an ethernet port, although they refuse to actually say anything about how it will be used when the box is released in June.
CEO of Austar, John Porter, was quoted as saying: “We’re agnostic when it comes to content. Our vision is to be the consumer interface for digital content, no matter which pipe it comes through, be it digital terrestrial TV, satellite or the web. It’s about our box morphing into being a media centre for the TV set.”
You may think that weve gone a little Foxtel crazy over the past few days, and you’d probably be right, but that doesn’t mean that we’ve forgotten the regional peeps who use Austar instead. Okay, we did forget, until we were kindly pointed in the direction of Austar’s MyStar service by reader David. Then we remembered all about you regional folk.
Available now to all good most Austar subscribers, MyStar is a 160GB PVR box like the original iQ. Except with one huge boon – it has a free-to-air tuner built in which lets you record, watch and even browse the EPG for channel 7. In fact it has two FTA tuners and two satellite tuners, letting you do the whole record two things while watching something else thing.
You get support for Dolby Digital surround sound, closed captioning and component connections on the back, although sadly no HDMI. But it is only an SD box, so quit your complaining.
It costs $49.95 to install (and it needs to be professionally installed), with an ongoing monthly subscription fee of $14.95. And in case you can’t tell from the above picture, its one chunky looking box. But true beauty is on the inside, right? Right?
[Austar MyStar - Thanks David!]
