Hey Telstra, nobody cares about your stupid T-Box
I don’t know if Telstra are trying to take the mickey out of Microsoft, but their latest ‘too little too late’ scheme, the T-Box, looks suspiciously like Microsoft’s original Xbox.
Not only that but it appears to be able to do everything a modified X-Box was capable of, only the Xbox was released back in November 2001 – eight years ago.
Eight years too late. Welcome to entertainment innovation, Telstra style.
Holly Kramer, Telstra’s director of product management, said the unit gives users the ability to view and record free-to-air TV
pause and rewind live TV
and gain integrated access to exclusive BigPond internet TV channels and a movie download store.
Not having used either before I decided to have a look.
My first stop, Bigpond internet TV, reveals a whole bunch of sports channels (does anyone really need a round-the-year 24/7 AFL football channel?), one music and news channel and some on demand content. The on demand content is a series of video clips ranging from 20 seconds to a few minutes in length.
Hardly a television replacement.
Over at Bigpond Movies I’m greeted with banner advertisements for Bad Boys 2 (seriously?) and a range of featured downloads of movies made in the 90′s going for $4 a pop. The new releases section has two movies for download ‘The Last House on the Left’ and ’17 Again’, both I’ve never even heard of. New releases are downloadable for the bargain price of $6 a pop.
The movies are DRM encoded for 24 hours which means once your time is up they’re gone. Oh and additionally you can’t
(a) display or make the Video Content available in any public place;
(b) resupply the Video Content to any person;
(c) transfer the Video Content from your Personal Computer to any other device;
(d) copy the Video Content, or in any other way breach the copyrights in the Video Content; and
(e) remove your Personal Computer from Australia while it contains any Video Content.
Currently there’s 1278 movie downloads on offer however this number includes trailers. Bandwidth wise both sites are unmetered so Bigpond plan quotas are irrelevant.
Still, I don’t think either Bigpond internet TV or Bigpond Movies are large selling points. Infact if I was Telstra I’d be trying to sweep them under the carpet rather quickly and rather quietly.
So with internet tv and Bigpond movies being largely cost prohibitive and wildly out of date content wise, you’re left with a basic PVR functionality with an electronic program guide.
Telstra think this entertainment revolution is such a breakthrough that they’ve decided to beta test the system first. That’s right, despite the technology being almost a decade old not only does it need to be trialled but the T-Box doesn’t even have a release date. It’s “expected to be available across Australia next year”.
I might sound overly cynical when writing about Telstra but I assure you there’s a very good reason. I grew up with Bigpond cable, not the la-di-da Bigpond broadband network available today, but the barebones fledgling cable network with it’s crappy 300mb download limit; which we paid through the nose for.
Then I got to watch Telstra systematically set back broadband innovation back in Australia by a good decade with poor decision after poor decision. And no I’m not exaggerating, here’s a recent example of Telstra stupidity.
Yesterday Telstra CEO David Thodey played down the demand for high speed broadband access in Australia;
Let’s be clear, the demand is still latent. We offer a large number of high-speed access technologies today and I think we would be lucky to have even at the home, with ADSL2+, 5 per cent of our customers on 20Mbps (download speeds). So you have to be realistic about what the demand is.
Less then 24 hours later however, Telstra announced
that one million Melbourne homes will soon have access to super-fast broadband after the completion of upgrades to Telstra’s cable broadband network.
“This means that Melbourne now has the fastest (hybrid fibre coaxial) cable network…in the country,” said Ms Kramer.
Yeah I’m sure the T-Box will be a roaring success guys, keep up the good work.
November 20th, 2009 at 8:30 am Leper(Quote)
It’s hilarious that Telstra simultaneously try to push a service that requires high-speed bandwidth (video on demand) and then turns around and declares that high-speed broadband isn’t desired by their customers. Trying to launch this T-box system without it is pointless, as customers aren’t going to pay to rent movies that take hours to download before watching them. If the choice is between a long download from a handful of movies or a trip to the local video store which has a larger range, only the laziest of people will prefer Telstra’s option. The target market for this device appears to be lazy people with too much money and too little sense, although to be fair, they are a highly desirable market.
November 20th, 2009 at 11:38 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
Bigpond’s movies seem to be roughly 1-1.5 gigabytes size wise, so yeah you’d think customers would want faster speeds to reduce the download waiting times…
As you point out it seems most of Telstra’s internet service offerings would benefit from increased speed, yet there’s no demand for it?
I can’t help but think Thodey is confusing lack of demand for Telstra’s products with lack of demand for increased internet speeds.
If Telstra keep solely targeting lazy people with too much money (how does one get into this demographic anyway?), then you’ve got to wonder how much longer they’re going to remain profitable.
Surely there’s not that many lazy and rich people in Australia to run a national business off?
November 20th, 2009 at 1:01 pm Nick(Quote)
Hey it could have been called an I-Box, but I guess the Kraft marketing gurus put an end to that.
November 20th, 2009 at 2:50 pm Andrew King(Quote)
Fu*%ing clownshoes. Once again Telstra drags it’s ass on the ground.
November 21st, 2009 at 12:05 am aussiebear(Quote)
LOL, a fellow ripped off BigPond cabler! I remember the first plan I was on: 500MB/month + 35cents/MB if you go over!
As for Telstra, what do you expect? Big, slow, and completely lacking in innovation.
Won’t this new service collide with Foxtel?
(Telstra has a 50% stake in that service.)
November 21st, 2009 at 12:10 am ozsoapbox(Quote)
Strangely enough despite the piddly data allowances they gave us I remember back then their biggest selling point was the speed!
From what I’ve read Telstra claims the two services are designed to be complimentary of eachother. Everyone else thinks the T-box is a backup plan incase they have to sell off their share in Foxtel to get a slice of the National Broadband Network.
November 21st, 2009 at 11:59 am Elbogrease(Quote)
Ahhhh Telstra, what a bunch of wankers.
Who wants another box in the lounge?
How many powerepoints do these dickheads think i have in my loungeroom?
The best new tellys are getting released with inbuilt pvr and internet browsing so who wants their old crap anyway?
November 22nd, 2009 at 3:03 pm Chris(Quote)
Telstra doesn’t have demand for their ADSL2+ services because they are ridiculously overpriceed.
November 22nd, 2009 at 4:32 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
They should stop advertising how many megabits a second their network is and just start measuring it in terms of how many dollars per second fly out of your wallet when using the service.
Much more accurate.
July 12th, 2010 at 8:20 pm Alan(Quote)
it’s junk like all their services.
July 16th, 2010 at 10:19 pm harry(Quote)
Never have I seen such a collection of uninformed, biased and factually incorrect comments based purely on the perceived bias that Telstra couldn’t possibly bring out something tht works and works well.
I also have a Tivo and this is quite comparable in performance with extra internet channels and is reasonably priced on the riight plan. But, of course, this would require a few of you to pull your heads out of your bums and do some work to find a plan that suits your needs.
If you do the work you will be very pleased with the value for money this offers compared to other pvr’S WITH CRAPPY INTERFACES.
July 17th, 2010 at 1:45 pm ozsoapbox(Quote)
Seriously… Telstra bringing out something that works? Where the hell have you been for the past few decades?
Hmm… well let’s have a look at those plans,
$99 a month for 25gb
$109 a month for 25gb with unlimited local calls.
$139 a month for 100gb.
$159 a month for $200gb.
Oh and then there’s the movie rental charges too. So in a nutshell I have to take out a second mortgage to use Bigpond internet with my crappy Tbox.
Or I could just buy a USB enabled $50 standalone divx player, save a bucketload in internet fees and watch whatever I want virtually on demand.
Telstra’s TBox might be ok but the plans they bundle it with are overpriced rendering them utterly useles. In other words they don’t work.