Should you buy the Foxtel Now box?

FOXTEL has launched a product that’s designed to solve one of its customers’ biggest obstacles to fully embracing its streaming service. Is it worth your money?

IF FOXTEL’S contract-free streaming service, Foxtel Now (previously Foxtel Play) is still playing catch up to Netflix or Stan, this might be a gamechanger for the pay TV company.

In launching the Foxtel Now box, it has acknowledged one of the biggest obstacles consumers have had in embracing its streaming platform: Access.

Foxtel Now was supported by only a limited number of smart TVs, PS4 and Xbox (an unintuitive experience), Chromecast, plus mobile, tablet and desktop.

So unless you had a particular smart TV or you shelled out for the Telstra TV puck, getting Foxtel Now on your big-screen TV wasn’t seamless.

Its predecessor, Foxtel Play, had even less options — no Chromecast.

At a reasonable price point of $99, the Foxtel Now box is designed to solve exactly this problem and will rival competitor “puck-style” hardware boxes including Telstra TV 2, the Fetch Mini and Apple TV.

SET-UP

The Foxtel Now box is easy to set up. Connect the box to your TV with the provided HDMI cable and then the power supply pack — even your Luddite parents could do this. With that, you’re good to go.

Don’t forget you need a Foxtel Now subscription — the box doesn’t work without one.

Optionally, the box supports an ethernet connection if you would rather not use Wi-Fi and it has a built-in TV tuner if you want to add free-to-air channels.

But without internet you can’t access the Foxtel Now homepage — so you won’t be able to watch free-to-air channels when the internet is down if you set it up like this.

(It’s worth noting that there is just a single aerial input, which means if you’ll need a splitter box if want to keep your actual TV tuned as well.)

The remote — bigger than an Apple TV remote, smaller than a TV remote — is connected via Bluetooth.

Blends in with the rest of your home entertainment hardware. Source: Chris Griffith

I NTERFACE

There are three main screens — Home, Live TV and On Demand.

Home is a curated collection of viewing suggestions plus your “continue watching” list. One drawback is it doesn’t have a watchlist option — ie. you can’t add shows you want to watch later on.

If you’re trying to build a watchlist of sorts, you’ll need to play the piece of content you’d rather watch later and then go back so it’s added to your “continue watching” list. Perhaps a software update down the track will remedy this.

The interface also doesn’t remember which episodes of a series you’ve already watched so you better have a good memory if you’re coming back to a show you’ve left for a while.

Live TV is the linear stream of Foxtel channels in your subscription package plus free-to-air channels — you can’t input channel numbers, you need to scroll through the list to find the channel you want.

On Demand is pretty self-explanatory. There’s also a search function that remembers your last three search terms.

A big plus is the significantly increased reliability of the app, especially compared to Foxtel Play which made you afraid to even pause whatever you were watching because nine times out of 10, it would time out and send you back to the beginning of the program.

It now also has continuous watch, automatically queuing up the next episode. In two weeks of use, it only buffered twice.

On demand content will stream in HD, while live TV resolution is capped at 720p.

The user interface is significantly improved over previous iterations. Picture: Toby Zerna

GOOGLE APPS

The Foxtel Now box is built on an Android TV platform, which means you can access the Google Play store to download apps that can be installed on the device.

None of the extra apps come preinstalled so you’ll have to do that during set-up though you must have a Google account.

Apps you can download include Stan, ABC iView, YouTube, Spotify, free-to-air catch-up services from Seven and Ten and whatever else lives on the Google Android TV store. Except for Kodi, which has been disabled because of piracy concerns.

If you don’t have the movies package, you can rent them from the Google Play store.

What you won’t find is Netflix or Amazon Prime Video.

Amazon is understandable — the service is supported by so few platforms, likely because Amazon will want Aussie consumers to buy its Fire TV device, not yet available here though that will probably change in coming days.

The Netflix omission is also drawing criticism from users who want an all-encompassing streaming solution.

Additionally, the Foxtel Now box is recognised as a Chromecast streaming point on your home network, meaning you can broadcast from your computer or phone straight to the device — there is no Netflix get-around with Chromecast.

In theory you should also be able to use Google Home to send to the device, although it didn’t work during testing.

DESIGN AND SPECIFICATIONS

The Foxtel Now box has a strange shape when compared to the flat, rectangular size of its competitors — it’s kind of like a stubby, slightly inverted cylinder. The box is black with discreet Foxtel branding on the front and will blend in with the rest of your entertainment hardware.

The Foxtel Now box makes it easier to catch up on Game of Thrones. Picture: HBO

The Foxtel Now box connects to your television via HDMI, has a S/PDIF digital audio output to connect to your home theatre system and a USB 3.0 for playing video files.

Ethernet has been included, plus a RF aerial input for the HD free-to-air digital tuner.

The box offers Ultra HD resolution and HEVC streaming, although there is no support for High Dynamic Range.

As Foxtel’s box has launched without Netflix, the ultra HD support is only useful for Stan.

Like the Fetch Mini and Telstra TV, it has no storage capacity so everything (except for the free-to-air channels) is delivered through streaming, meaning it can’t be used without an internet connection.

It also doesn’t replace your traditonal Foxtel IQ box, Fetch Mighty or similar set-top boxes in that you can’t record live TV, or pause and rewind free-to-air channels if that’s important to you.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The Foxtel Now box is a compelling product designed to solve a customer problem.

The lack of Netflix could be a dealbreaker for some and those guys may want to look to the Telstra TV 2 box which includes all three streaming brands plus the catch-up TV services.

And for those who are not Foxtel users the Apple TV still has a slicker user interface, and is attractive if you’re already trapped in the Apple ecosystem.

The $99 price point for the Foxtel Now box is very reasonable as it includes a TV tuner, which both the Fetch Mini and Fetch Mighty do, but for a higher price.

If you are a Foxtel fan and want to upgrade your home entertainment needs with a fresh new device, this is worth considering. Foxtel is probably betting this ends up under a few Christmas trees.

The Foxtel Now box shows the pay TV giant is serious about its streaming game.

Continue the conversation on Twitter with @mattydunn11 and @wenleima.

*News Corp, publisher of this website, owns 50 per cent of Foxtel.