Telstra who has sold more than 750,000 T-Box units claims that the carriers is currently in talks with device makers to take content from its set-top box to a range of new platforms.
Media reports last month ?suggested that Telstra would soon scrap its T-Box personal video ?recorder in favour of putting its content on Foxtel’s IQ set-top box, but yesterday the telco’s boss David Thodey said no such decisions had been made.
“We are continuing to develop a replacement product for the T-Box. We are looking at the options but we have not yet declared what we are doing there,” Mr Thodey told the Australian newspaper.
.”We are in the ?market looking and we do think that both dongles and pucks (such as Google’s USB-sized streaming device) will be important going forward. We are just looking at what makes best sense.” he added.
Telstra’s head of retail, Gordon Ballantyne said “We will have multiple devices. This is not about being locked into one platform; it’s about having multiple devices to expand our market reach,” Mr Ballantyne said. “There will be some need for the box in some situations, but if you want to expand your market then there are different price points for simpler devices that can give consumers lower entry costs without eroding premium aggregated content across pay-TV.”
Early speculation was that Telstra could retire the T-Box replacing it with a cheaper set-top box that is being developed by Foxtel. Telstra has also been in talks with Google since the start of this year on ways to get its suite of Bigpond media properties, including movies and online sports broadcasts, on to the search giant’s Chromecast.
The Australian said that The Chromecast offers users a cheap, diminutive streaming device, which can be plugged into television sets using the HDMI port, making it possible to watch high-definition video and content from the web on a larger TV screen.
There is also potential for Chromecast to include an app for Foxtel and the lucrative Fox Sports franchise, which is the pay-TV service’s biggest driver of subscriptions.
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