Australian Foxtel HD pricing leaked

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 19 May 2008 10:31

Opinion and Analysis

While it’s not official, the long awaited high definition content pricing for Australian pay television operator, Foxtel, has been leaked – and should launch soon. Australia is far behind the US when it comes to the provision of pay TV high definition television content, although some HD programming has been available on free-to-air TV for some time.

Gizmodo Australia, the local version of the gadgetry site that claims such an amazing a love of shiny toys that it’s unnatural (a bit like me, haha), has published a leak of claimed pricing for Foxtel’s upcoming HD pay TV service.

Gizmodo says a reader called David managed to get through to a now unavailable page on Foxtel’s website with all the juicy HD pricing details, with the page link diverting, in the address bar, to one that is “suspended”.

In addition, unless David is a dab hand at graphic design, there's a PDF document linked to at Gizmodo's site with all the Foxtel channels in SD and HD with associated pricing which looks extremely authentic, even claiming to be correct as of today’s date, May 19 2008.

There are two Foxtel HD channels, which cost AUD $9.95 each or $14.95 for the two, but as with any of these pay TV deals, you need to not only be subscribing to a specific package first to qualify to be able to watch Foxtel HD, you also need the new IQ2 box, which costs AUD $200 to upgrade to, and then $10 per month ongoing.

That said, the Foxtel IQ2 box is far superior to the original IQ box, letting you record “multiple programs” at the same time, coming with almost double the recording space of the original Foxtel IQ, and the ability to watch "Foxtel Box Office HD movies on demand - just press play and the movie starts" - although those movies will cost AUD $4.95 each, if the PDF is to be believed.

Whichever way you look at it, getting HD content on Foxtel ain’t cheap: the full platinum HD package with EVERYTHING plus two on-demand movies per month costs… AUD $130.95 per month.

Will Australians flock to it in an era of ever rising prices? Please read onto page 2.