Australian Xbox 360 owners will later this year get access to what Americans would call cable television, with a deal struck between Microsoft and Foxtel, a provider of satellite TV.
While exact details like pricing and, more importantly, exactly what channels are available are thin on the ground, we do know that for a monthly subscription fee 360 owners will get access to Fox Sports, Discovery, Nickelodeon, Disney, MTV and “other leading channels”.
Doesn’t sound like too big a deal, but in Australia, Fox Sports is king. It’s the home of Australian Rules football, Rugby League, Rugby Union, the English Premier League, the local A-League soccer competition and a lot of international cricket as well. For Britons, it’s like Sky, for Americans, it’s like NFL Sunday Ticket, NBA TV and MLB TV rolled into one.
As most Australians are still without a Foxtel subscription – it’s a bit pricey – this should prove to be big business for both the 360 and Foxtel, provided a workaround can be found for the nation’s stingy bandwidth limitations (hopefully Microsoft and Foxtel can lean on Australian ISP’s to exclude Foxtel data from caps).
FatShady
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 3:52 PMI posted a question on InsiderX asking if the HDD will act like IQ. I doubt it but will wait to see the response from jinx.
Jimu_Hsien
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 3:53 PMSo I need to leave my 360 on for long periods of time, when I’m not playing games?
Hmmmmmmmmm…
James Mac
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 4:08 PMDepending on pricing and ISP limitations… woot?
MikeZdoesit
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 4:09 PMIf its in the iinet free zone (and cheap), I will consider. I do actually have a foxtel Dish that came with the house we bought but just cant afford pay TV thanks to ridicules internet prices.
Joshy206
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 4:15 PMIs there any info on whether Xbox support comes with already existing Foxtel subscriptions?
The Cracks
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 7:18 PMIndeed. We have Foxtel already, and the Xbox is in a different room. So, I’m curious as to how the Xbox Foxtel integrates with already available Foxtel.
upandatthem
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 4:17 PMit sounds good in theory, but i’ll be interested to hear more about costing, whether the harddrive can be used with an IQ type function that it already has, whether the data will or won’t be included in ISP caps, etc
Michael Pannunzio
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 4:24 PMI fear it will only be Telstra customers who can get Foxtel data exclude from caps, just to increase Telstra’s horrible market dominance.
Ad
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 6:11 PMSeconded. I can’t see a Telstra subsiduary being allowed to make any deals which positively impact Bigpond’s competitors.
D
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 11:15 PMMeanwhile im on 100 gig telstra adsl2 at $70 so if foxtel is telstra :-) I might be in luck
Stone
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 4:24 PMFirstly, I’m staggered this news had to come from the US site.
Secondly, it just highlights how backwards we are: Despite Foxtel being 50% owned by Telstra, according to the Australian; there will be no NRL or AFL streaming of matches through the Xbox since Telstra owns the digital rights to those sporting codes.
*face palm*
http://bit.ly/cTzE1r
Rod
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 6:57 PMNo AFL and NRL? Damn, they’re the whole point of having Foxtel!
Luke
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 4:58 PMThis makes me want to out and go out and buy an Xbox 360, but i have already got Foxtel and IQ in my bedroom so for me its kind of useless.
DBOT
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 5:04 PMApparantly they are in negotiations with 2 local ISP’s for quota free access to foxtel….fingers crossed its iinet :) but id say iinet and telstra will be the ISP’s that are unmetered.
MaXX
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 6:00 PMYay! Cable TV! Oh wait.. I have a 20Mbps connection thanks to iinet, and cable tel4evision is redundant… and I dont like watching things on strict schedules..
On the up side it does give me another monthly bill to have to deal with, which is always fun.
Michael Barnes
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 6:35 PMI has a choice when I was about 13. Foxtel or Internet. I chose internet. But now I’m 19 and have a job, this is seriously tempting. The only problem is; it could CHEW my internet even though its 50GB on peak 50GB off.
Simeon
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 6:59 PMNo AFL = No Sale
It’s a total fail without it.
Stinky
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 7:04 PMRoll on NBN.
Justin Gawthorne
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 8:20 PMthis would go down well for me as a Bigpond customer ( as foxtel will be “unlimited” because Bigpond owns foxtel )
WellThen
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 8:21 PMHmm… Foxtel isn’t just satellite. It does use cable.
Aliasalpha
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 8:52 PMLet me buy individual channels (rather than packs of 1 decent channel and 7 shit ones ) for a fairly small fee.
Let me download shows rather than stream them on their timeline (or at least let me schedule the 360 to record them).
Let the bandwidth be free through an ISP deal.
If those 3 things are done, I might do it but if I have to consume a lot of my very limited bandwidth, buy a channel pack containing the shopping channel, 3 shitty endless repeat soap opera channels and a channel about obscure sports that even the commentators have barely heard of all to get the comedy channel which I can then only watch like regular tv, I doubt I’ll be embracing it.
Ian Casey
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 9:43 PMThis is a n00b question, but how would this work without an antenna socket in the XBox?
Darius
Friday, May 21, 2010 at 4:04 PMthrought lan port courtesy of the interweb
P3SS3SSOd
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 10:11 PMI’m assuming this would be some kind of use for the On Demand stuff thats hosted online that people can stream to their PC’s currently.
Would be little effort for the 360 to run this with account permissions that would allow only the channels you pay for to stream. But this would just stream programmes from channels.. not the actual channels.
Will be interesting to see develop regardless.
Thomas Thongvilu
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 10:18 PMitd be crap if it was through an isp
my area is crap for streaming anything. cant even stream youtube hd videos.
what about a usb add on that converts tv signals?
Matt
Thursday, May 20, 2010 at 11:58 PMso….on top of xbl subscriptions, add-ons and avatar gear, netflix and this, how much money are microsoft making now?
Strand0410
Friday, May 21, 2010 at 12:16 AMNow when are we going to get Netflix and Netflix-streaming Down Under?
jessica@Cable TV Providers
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 1:18 PMIts all good news for Aussie game console, TV lovers as the free-to-air networks are offering their free online Catch Up TV services, which are coming directly to TVs, Blu-ray players and games consoles such as the PlayStation 3. However, the Foxtel Xbox 360 deal with Microsoft could mean a lack of Catch Up TV services on the console.