What is Pay TV, anyway?

While it’s a bit of a catch-all term that is sometimes used to describe any form of TV service that’s paid for rather than received for free, in Australia the term “pay TV” has historically referred to the various services that have appeared since 1995. They provide access to extra broadcast TV channels that are unique to the service – a novel concept to Australians when it first started.

Delivery of those channels can be through several forms – via a network of fibre and analogue cables laid out in many capital cities (very similar to the Fibre to the Node networks now being rolled out for broadband), via the internet or, most commonly these days, as a transmission from a dedicated TV satellite to a dish on your home or building’s roof (yes, television from space!).

You subscribe to pay TV by paying a base monthly rate. This gives you access to a core set of channels. Then, you add extra “packs” or groups of channels depending on your interests (sports, movies, lifestyle, and so on). In that regard, the system has more in common with the UK pay TV format that the US one. In the US, pay TV is largely delivered via cable and is very often tied to a home broadband service as a package. In Australia, though you can get a broadband service via the pay TV cable, it’s relatively uncommon, and becomes more so as more people opt for a satellite-based delivery.

Australian Pay TV today

The current landscape for pay TV in Australia is actually more diverse than it used to be. Even though, when it comes to traditional cable and satellite pay TV, there’s only the one provider dominating the industry: Foxtel. Since launch, Foxtel made the move to high definition and eventually added all its HD channels to its satellite service, meaning even those with no cable access get full service. Moreover, their introduction of the iQ range of boxes – combined pay TV receiver/decoders and digital video recorders – have made Foxtel into an incredibly user-friendly service even for those that can’t be in front of the TV when a show goes to air.

In the internet space, meanwhile, competitor Fetch TV has gone from strength to strength in the years it’s been operating. It shares many of the basic subscription channels with Foxtel, as well as adding some perks of their own – including a selection of included movies for customers to stream each month at no cost. The latest Fetch hardware can be had as either a small streaming-only box (the Mini) or a fully-featured digital video recorder (the Mighty). Unlike Foxtel, customers can buy these boxes to own outright (though they have limited functionality without an active Fetch TV service).

Foxtel’s move into the internet space takes the form of Foxtel Now, which combines live streaming of Foxtel’s channels with the on-demand streaming service also found on the iQ3 cable and satellite boxes.

In a world where on-demand streaming is taking off in a big way, the continued success of both Foxtel and Fetch shows that there’s still very much a market for linear pay TV. And millions of Australians agree!