Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 02 July 2008 16:37
Opinion and Analysis
Page 2 of 3
So once we get past the part of the article that says it could be a lemon and quotes JB Hi-Fi as saying they’re not interested in selling it, something that seems to ignore the fact that prices for consumer technologies usually decline in price, especially after “exclusive periods” and in the lead up to Christmas, we get to the part that starts promoting Foxtel.
First up is the disclosure that Foxtel is “partly owned by News Corporation, the publisher of The Courier-Mail”, and that its “rival digital video recorder iQ2” sells for “$200 upfront, with a monthly fee from $10.”
That convenient “from $10” ignores the fact that if you want the full package, and especially the full HD package, your monthly fee will actually be “from $100”, not $10.
JB Hi-Fi’s Uechtritz is then quoted as saying "I think a lot of people may want to spend $120 a year rather than $700 upfront for something that may change down the track”.
Well, the TiVo box is going to be firmware upgradeable at a cost of “tens of dollars” on a once-off basis, at least until the next major firmware update arrives, and what Uechtritz says conviently ignores the fact that you still have to pay for the television subscription package which adds a lot more to your true monthly cost than a mere “from $10”.
Next up in the article is a quote from Foxtel’s Patrick Delany who notes that Foxtel has sold 22,000 IQ2’s “in the first month of release”. What, only 22,000? I’d personally have expected Foxtel to have sold a lot more of its IQ version 2 boxes by now, but we are in a “soft consumer climate” so perhaps it’s not so surprising.
Delany then states: “We started out with our iQ being $500 upfront and we very quickly moved to a monthly charge; that's the way Australians like to pay for things”.
Well, my assessment is that being slugged $500 upfront and then anywhere up to (and over) $100 per month for television was probably too much for people to bear, and so to encourage take-up, Foxtel had to drop the price of the Foxtel IQ box.
Even if you are a previous Foxtel IQ owner and want to upgrade to the new Foxtel IQ2 box, you still need to pay $200 per box that you get for your house, so Foxtel isn’t exactly cheap or free, and the subscription price you’re paying is clearly not covering the total cost of the box.
The article does note, quite correctly, that the TiVo has “has half the storage memory of the iQ2” and says it “can record fewer programs simultaneously”, although I didn’t know that the Foxtel IQ2 box could record more than two programs simultaneously.
If any reader with Foxtel IQ2 can confirm this I’d love to know. The TiVo can record two programs from SD or HD sources simultaneously.
What does the Courier Mail article say next?! Continued on page 3.
