We got a cleaner at work who has one, we call him the "ghost Buster "...........mm

Can't live without it - even tho it hurts soooo much giving a penny to the evil one Murdoch

It's a must for the football alone - loads of premiership games live, The coca cola championship, the A League Cricket.

Some of the Aussie broadcasts are woeful ...partly (possibly) due to no license fee????
UK TV is better or at least was when I left!

It's something you can pay $115 per month (well currently my hubby does) for the opportunity every month to go "crap,crap,crap,seen it, repeat,repeat,repeat,repeat, no I don't want to watch the adult channel, crap,crap,why on earth is that on,repeat,repeat,seen it,seen it,repeat,repeat, oh one I haven't seen finally!!!,crap,crap,repeat" and if you have multi-room you get twice the excitement each month

The smarter ones get a Sat dish I guess....not that I have!

I go back for a visit every year, rajj (just came back) and all I seem to see is Jerry Springer, Jeremy Kyle (i.e., Jerry Springer wannabe), all the soaps on almost every day, talent shows...seems very dumbed down to me.

edit: if it was just at my family's place I could understand it, but my in-laws are quite intelligent and they have all those on too.

have a wee read of this thread I posted

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=630827

Had to - once we realised about the missed channels we'd passed the cooling off period. Ended up buying a set top box to get them.

we love you Jerry we do, we love you jerry we do, oh Jerry we love you.

On a serious note..that sounds bad...but i'm sure the BBC would still be miles better than ABC as they get reasonably good dosh to experiment with new programming...I guess i'll soon find out too - i'm going for a visit soon yeahhhh.

As others have said, yes it's basically Sky. The hardware is pretty much the same and even the on screen guide (EPG) is the same. The difference is in the programming and mentality towards it over here.

There only a fraction of the number of channels and it is more expensive. In the UK most people who enjoy the US or SciFi shows picked up Sky because they always bought all the best shows. Over there that is not the case, if anything it's the free to air channels which pick up all the US shows (and then screw around with the scheduling something awful).

I owned Sky+ in the UK for many years and recently picked up FOXTEL with their version of Sky+ (called IQ2) for some local Aussie sports, it's a total rip-off and I won't be renewing.

My advice is to spend the money you would have put on Foxtel on the fastest, biggest bandwidth, internet connection you can get and download the TV Shows you want to watch. Foxtel simply isn't worth the money unless you can't live without the Premier League Soccer

Al

I watched United beat City 4-3 last night... That alone made my subsciption to Austar worth having.

Only programmes I watch on free to air are on the ABC otherwise its Foxtel for me, my brother has Select which is cheaper but it does not have as many channels and no UK TV.

We have two set top boxes in the house one especially for me and the other for my daughter. OH reads more than watches.

I think Austar is satellite and Foxtel is cable, but I could be wrong. There are some differences in their line-ups.

I'm just about to ditch it. Considering it costs about $100 a month, you can buy a lot of DVDs for that money and have more than enough TV to watch of your choice and at your own convenience.

Just to clarify...

Foxtel standard box is same as Sky standard box - mostly used for second room installations.

Sky + is the equivalent of Foxtel IQ here in Aus. It's a silver Foxtel box, has two tuners (same as UK) and I think a 160 gig hard drive. Satdnard definition only.

Foxtel IQ2 includes HD which is the equivalent of Sky HD in the UK. IQ2 is a black box and includes both standard def and high def tuners, larger hard drive of 320 gig etc.

There are a few manufacturers of these boxes in the UK. Here in Aus I think it is only Pace, who I always preferred although there could be others.

I'm also ditching it. The only thing that gets watched on it in our house in childrens programmes. Nearly everything we watch now is downloaded and all the kids shows can be downloaded too. I'd rather spend a bit more on a bigger ADSL2+ cap that fork out what I am on Foxtel.

We ditched foxtel years ago - found we were paying a fortune and only watching adverts and endless cross-promotions.

The smart move was putting the money we saved into a dedicated Home Theatre PC and getting a bit fat internet connection. We record plenty of bits and pieces of FTA tv and automatically strip out adverts to make it watchable (theres actually some decent stuff on at strange hours) - and we have a pretty constant lot of stuff being pulled down on BitTorrent for the things that either dont get shown locally, or schedules get stuffed around so much they are made unwatchable locally.

I'd say unless you're a mad keen premier league supporter that there are MUCH better options available if you're prepared to think outside the square.



For the record: I have 4 tuners and 2TB of disk in my machine, my photo galleries are viewable by the folks back home (no need to upload to some limited hosting site), I can stream recordings from the HTPC to a laptop if necessary and it sits in a neat HiFi component looking black box under the TV. I built it all for ~$800 (so paid for itself in less than 8 months of non-foxtel payments)