Box around the clock

The high-definition bandwagon must be a heavy cart by now, because everyone seems to be jumping on it. It is still a good six months from launch but Foxtel held a “press event” in Sydney to unveil details of its new high-definition service.

The subscription-television provider will deliver four 24-hour HD channels under the banner of Foxtel HD+, scheduled for a mid-year launch. Foxtel’s executive director of content, Patrick Delaney, described the new HD channels as carrying “five times the resolution of a standard-definition picture [and Foxtel’s] HD channels are the best-looking HD signals in Australia”.

The pay TV service follows free-to-air networks Seven and Ten, which launched their respective high-definition channels late last year (Nine is planning to launch its channel in March). Initially the mid-2008 launch will be dominated by documentaries and sport, with dedicated content from the BBC, Discovery, National Geographic, Fox Sports and ESPN.

Delaney says the most likely scenario is that rather than being entirely exclusive content, many of the shows will premiere on the HD channels before making their way into the regular Foxtel programming.

There will also be a new movies-on-demand service called Foxtel Box Office HD, where subscribers can watch a show downloaded to the IQ set-top box in 1080i resolution and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound. The pay-per-view movies can be watched instantly, and viewers have “a 48-hour viewing window” where they can pause, fast- forward and rewind the show. As with the existing Foxtel Box Office service, movie titles are released 90 days after they become available on DVD.

However, subscribers must upgrade to the new IQ2 set-top box that Foxtel will release when the service is launched. The IQ2 will come in two versions; high- and standard- definition. The former version of the personal digital recorder features a 320GB hard disk, able to store up to 30 hours of video (or 90 hours of standard definition). It also features three tuners, so viewers can record two separate channels while watching a third. A fourth tuner is included so that Foxtel can push content to the box. IQ2 will also feature a broadband connection, though it’s more for future-proofing at this stage, as it will be turned off on arrival.

IQ2 will launch into a much more crowded digital recorder market than the original IQ box, with Channel Seven scheduled to bring the long- awaited TiVo recorder here soon. Delaney is unfazed, however. “It’s a cool brand but the product doesn’t live up to the brand,” he says. “In Australia, one particularly big problem is that [TiVo] isn’t fed by that many channels. The disk-drive machine with a good [electronic program guide] is only as good as how much programming you’ve got.”