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As an Australian, you can pay $15/mo for Foxtel Now "Pop pack", which includes Game of Thrones and a bunch of other TV shows.
That's cheaper than Americans who pay for HBO GO who have to pay $15USD

https://www.foxtel.com.au/now/...

But that involves giving money to the most evil man on the planet. Given the fact that they cant actually do anything but send warnings to Australians, it's a no brainier.

If you want my money, you need to give me the video forever, which I can watch on my schedule, in a format I find acceptable and from a source I dont find evil. Right now, torrents beats the legitimate option on 3 or more of those criteria.

$15/mo. Link.

At $3.75/episode, I think that pretty convincingly sinks the argument of "I have NO CHOICE but to pirate Game of Thrones because no one will offer it at a reasonable price!"

As an Australian, you can pay $15/mo for Foxtel Now "Pop pack", which includes Game of Thrones and a bunch of other TV shows.
That's cheaper than Americans who pay for HBO GO who have to pay $15USD

https://www.foxtel.com.au/now/...

Other way around in some places..

https://www.foxtel.com.au/shop/packages-and-deals/?execution=e1s1
$47 a month for the basic 37 chans.. $109 for 86 channels. (+$10p/m for HD)

The Piracy battle has been lost here in Australia.

Foxtel in Australia is minimum AUD72.00/mth and a minimum 12 month commitment to access Showtime which is carrying Breaking Bad. It used to air on a FTA channel but Foxtel has stitched up 'exclusive' arrangements that are removing essentially all HBO, AMC (Mad Men, Breaking Bad) , and BBC material from FTA and all other possible legal avenues. It should hardly be a surprise that 'exclusive' is a relative term.

Foxtel in Australia is minimum AUD72.00/mth and a minimum 12 month commitment to access Showtime which is carrying Breaking Bad. It used to air on a FTA channel but Foxtel has stitched up 'exclusive' arrangements that are removing essentially all HBO, AMC (Mad Men, Breaking Bad) , and BBC material from FTA and all other possible legal avenues. It should hardly be a surprise that 'exclusive' is a relative term.

Let me do the math for my own little facet of the gem here.

I generally like a few shows at once. I am currently interested in Big Bang Theory, Game of Thrones, Fringe, Walking Dead and Falling Skies.

As these are shows that are aired at different season times, I will calculate the costs for a year of viewing.

To get access to both BBT and GOT, it costs me around $90 per month. Fringe WAS aired on Free to Air, although it was at a 10:30pm timeslot. Walking Dead was finally aired around a year and a half after the US release. Fox8 is airing Falling Skies season 2 "fast tracking" it to Australia just three days after an episode airs in the US.

So, for a mere $1080 per year, I do get access to these shows, if I watch them in their timeslots and most with commercials. Now, lets say that I don't want to time my life to these shows, I can get a Foxtel IQ and record these shows, it costs me $10 per month. That's now $1,200. Now, I do understand that for my money I get a LOT of other channels and shows. But where my frustration comes in is that I am simply not interested in them. Would I watch some of them if I had them? Sure. But that's no different to saying "Would I watch a DVD if I had it?" Yeah, probably, but would I buy it if I saw it at the store? Probably not.

I simply can't justify spending that sort of money for the few shows that I am interested in, furthermore, I am offended that the majority of the money I spend would go to subsidizing all the shit programming that is aired on all these other channels. I don't mind voting for shows with my wallet, but I feel violated knowing that a portion of my monthly fee is going to Jersey Shore, American Pickers or any other horrific mind throttling series.

About A$170 (US $180) just for movies/multiroom http://www.foxtel.com.au/shop/packages/build-your-own/default.htm once you start to add your own "channel packages".

How much more does the legit service cost?

Example

Yeh, because they wouldn't do it anywhere else.

(hint, they are already doing this)

Here in Australia, Foxtel, one (of 3) pay TV networks has released FOXTEL on the 360: http://www.foxtel.com.au/xbox/default.htm. It pulls live Foxtel streams across the Internet and integrates with their On-Demand services. No set contracts, no need to run new cables or put up dishes, a cheap low feature entry level package.

I think this piggybacks into the Zune TV functionality already deployed a few months ago.

$20 for the basic package (which is quite basic), and $15 each for additional sets of channels like sport, movies, Showtime, and "entertainment" (random channels that didn't get into the basic package ;-).

This is not perfect. For example, Fox Sports will black out AFL and NRL games that they would normally show on cable, because they don't have Internet broadcast rights for those games. But it seems to be a fair start at giving people tired of paying hundreds of dollars for hundreds of channels, when they may only watch 7 or 8 channels that just happen to be spread across a few different packages, an alternative to cable TV. Completely unbundled pricing -- subscribe on a channel by channel basis -- would be ideal, and this isn't there yet, but maybe it'll help push things in that direction.

Read the foxtel privacy agreement. It is an opt-out type system which is made worse as you must write them to even find out who they are giving your personal information to.

You must opt out of their direct-marketing and their "related business partners".

They are not only obtaining the right to feed you 30 second commercials they are obtaining the right to pass off your information to any company they deem to designate as "partner" or otherwise.

This is probably a never ending chain as each of their "partners" has their own privacy policies which could open you to even more unrelated companies.

I wouldn't be surprised if your information ends up on a spam list because of "partner" associations.

Two words

No thankyou.

http://www.foxtel.com.au/Privacy.htm

Television Guide:
Blue Healers - Channel 7 - 8:30-9:30
Without a Trace - Channel 9 - 9:30-10:30

Reality:
Blue Healers - Channel 7 - 8:42-9:45
Without a Trace - Channel 9 - 9:36-10:39

In Australia, the government is going to sell Telstra, the national telco, subject to there being a sufficient standard of service in rural areas. I think Telstra should be divided into its core services ie. the national network, owned by the government, and its non-core services like adsl, expensive premium phone services and suspect expansions into Asia. At the moment, Telstra is (almost) the only provider of adsl, and it charges competing companies as much or more for wholesale adsl as it charges customers retail.

Back on to topic: a nationally owned core-network company would have no problem sending out landlines, especially to a community of fifteen houses. In comparison, when cable television was belatedly introduced in Australia, two competing companies strung up their cables in many places in Melbourne until they ran out of money. So there is a duplicated service in many places (especially now the two programming providers have merged and are showing the same thing), and no service in many places. If I answer one of the fliers in my mail advertising Foxtel TV, and give my inner-city medium density housing address, I'm told that "the satellite service is available to your address, Sir". The objectives of a private company are to make a profit and provide service, wheras a public company should provide service and then (perhaps) make a profit.

The Fox News Channel (FNC) is available overseas in select countries: Italy, Australia, Japan, etc. In Australia, you will definitely want to investigate the following broadcast stations.

1. Austar
2. Foxtel

Comcast should realise that some international viewers might get pissed.

Notice where it says '70 countries' on the Foxtel page. Hmm.. Comcast, it's not only your customers that will be pissed. Oh, while your on the first page (NCable), feel free to sympathise with the fact that bandwidth is so darn expensive down here (Australia) when 1) You need it outside a captial city 2) The 'Big 4' will make it hard for you.

UKTV in Australia are running a marathon of Red Dwarf. I imagine all the Foxtel-equipped geeks would be watching that.

Me ... I'm having a sleep marathon.

Looks like foxtel.com.au's program listing for today turns up devoid of any actual programs - other dates like 2/1/2000 and on work fine though.