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Austar
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ustar is an Australian telecommunications company. Its main business activity is Subscription Television but it is also involved with internet access and mobile phones. It commenced operations in 1995.
AUSTAR's television subscriber base has grown to over 713,000 (at September 30, 2008), the largest subscription television operator in regional and rural Australia. AUSTAR provides, of subscription television services in a service area of approximately 2.4m homes, one-third of Australia's total homes, primarily using digital satellite technology.
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About Austar
Austar is an Australian telecommunications company. Its main business activity is Subscription Television but it is also involved with internet access and mobile phones. It commenced operations in 1995.
AUSTAR's television subscriber base has grown to over 713,000 (at September 30, 2008), the largest subscription television operator in regional and rural Australia. AUSTAR provides, of subscription television services in a service area of approximately 2.4m homes, one-third of Australia's total homes, primarily using digital satellite technology. AUSTAR also operates a digital cable network in Darwin
It is owned by Austar United Communications Limited . 54% of Austar United is owned by Liberty Global, through United Austar Partners. The remaining 46% is owned by public shareholders
Austar also owns 50% of XYZnetworks, a pay television program provider, a 50-50 joint venture between Foxtel and Austar.
Subscription television (Austar Television / Austar Digital)
Subscription Growth| Year | Subscribers | | 1998 | 300,000 | | 2000 | 400,000 | | 2004 | 443,000 | | 2005 | 500,000+ | | 2006 | 600,000+ | | 2007 | 658,087 | | 2008 | 713,000 |
AUSTAR's main business is subscription television, serving customers outside of the major metro areas. It takes programming from both Foxtel and Optus services, and operates on a digital platform.
AUSTAR Television is available in 2.4 million homes in regional and rural areas of all mainland states (bar Western Australia),Northern and Western Queensland -Gold Coast to Cairns, Tasmania and the capital cities of Darwin and Hobart. Subscriber numbers to Austar Television are second behind Foxtel. Delivery methods include utilising the Optus C-Class Satellite Optus C1 and a digital cable network in Darwin.
Austar's Television offering, as at September 2007 has 658,087 customers
The MyStar Personal Digital Recorder
Announced in November 2005, Thomson SA have been awarded the contract for the development of a 4 tuner PVR, two of which will be dedicated for Australia's Digital Terrestrial free-to-air (FTA) service. MyStar will also allow for recording of two shows at one time, while still being able to watch one pre-recorded. The FTA tuner does not work in a blackout area.
Mr. Porter had announced that the MyStar personal digital recorder had been delayed back to August 2007 rather than the May 2007 release date they had planned. In November 2007 the MyStar was released to people who nominated to be informed when it was released.
MyStar was launched to existing subscribers in late 2007, with a general launch to both new and existing customers in February 2008.
The current MyStar is the model T500. It is a 4 tuner set-top box equipped with 2 satellite tuners and 2 terrestrial tuners available both for viewing and recording standard definition digital free-to-air services including full electronic program guide data for Seven Network, WIN Television, Prime Television and Network Ten. (ABC, SBS and ABC2 continue to be provided via satellite). However, only two tuners can be used, owing to the fact the processor is not capable of handling all four tuners at once.
It features a 160GB Hard Drive, with 120GB User Accessible. It can record 60 hours of content. Because it is equipped with Macrovision Copy Protection, content saved to the MyStar cannot be transferred to other mediums (such as VHS or DVD) without the use of something such as a video stabiliser. It has support for Time shifting for up to 1 hour.
Support for Dolby Digital Surround Sound is available on selected programming when connected to appropriate equipment, however the Mystar box won't control the volume when using optial or coax, the volume must be controled by the device it is pluged into. It also has support for Closed Captioning and 4 different aspect ratios (4:3 Cropped, 16:9 Letterbox, 16:9 Postcard and 16:9 Widescreen). Both of these features are accessible through the remote’s coloured buttons.
It supports additional outputs not found on some of the standard decoders such as Component Video, as well as both Coaxial and Optical digital audio outputs. Support for Composite Video, S-Video and RF Out are also available.It also has USB and Ethernet ports, but they have no clear function as yet, and are likely to be used for updating the decoder.
The MyStar Remote is similar to the standard Austar Digital remote, but it has the addition of buttons specific to recording and playing back video. It shares an almost identical design to the Foxtel IQ remote, with the exception that it has an Austar button instead of a Foxtel button, and there is no AV button.
Mystar Critisism
The MyStar has been having ongoing technical issues which has plagued the system since release, however, Austar have said that "they have a huge team of people that will actively jump onto any issues as soon as they are reported to the call centre". Some of the numerous bugs are The MyStar box regularly causes the screen to black out, recordings to fail, freezing and has been known to automatically switch itself off and on.
Austar also said that "a new update (known as L54) which was released in October 2008, indicates this should resolve the following":
- Enhancements to recording reliability (including less failed recordings and black screens).
- Significant enhancements to the reliability of Series Link on both Satellite and FTA channels.
- Recording listings in Planner will no longer need a reset to restore them if lost.
- Realignment of displays in the Information banner during trickmodes which will cause greater understanding for customers.
- Enhancements in video processing to reduce pixelation.
- Enhancements to EPG and Planner application stability while performing recordings at the same time.
- Enhancements to the Hard Disk Drive Usage Meter to provide a more accurate reading.
Austar Mobile (Mobile telephony)
Established in 2000, Austar Mobile offers mobile services via resale agreements with Optus [GSM] mobile network. After the closure of Telstra's CDMA network, Austar mobile will only offer services through Optus. AUSTARmobile, at June 30 2008, had 19,139 customers.
Dial-up internet (AUSTARnet)
Established in 2000, AUSTARnet currently outsources its network to COMindico and is available across Australia.
At June 30 2008, AUSTARnet had 20,190 customers.
Broadband Internet (Austar Broadband)
Established in 2006, Austar Broadband operates as a trial network inWagga Wagga, New South Wales and Tamworth, New South Wales .
Austar held the 2.5 & 3.5 GHz spectrum licences in regional Australia. This spectrums ideally suited for WiMAX.
Austar/Unwired Alliance
In 2005, Austar United and wireless internet provider Unwired announced a deal to swap spectrum under either company's control to allow for interoperable wireless broadband services across the country. In 2006, Austar United and Unwired together with Soul formed AUSalliance for the purposes of obtaining funding from the Australian Government's Broadband Connect Infrastructure Program and rolling out a regional broadband network.
Austar/Opel Agreement
In 2008, Austar entered into an agreement to sell its 2.5 & 3.5 GHz spectrum licences to the OPEL consortium (Optus & Elders) for AU$65 million and enter into a wholesale agreement with Optus for the resale of products operated by the OPEL consortium. The sale was contingent on the OPEL network rollout, so was cancelled upon the cancellation of the OPEL network by the Australian Government.
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