Telstra will today become the latest broadband provider to enter the TV set-top box market, announcing the T-Box personal video recorder.

While the company has consistently avoided commenting on its planned device until now, Telstra will unveil the T-Box in Melbourne as it begins a limited trial with some 200 customers – on the same day it is expected to announce the completion of its 100Mbps Hybrid-Fibre Coaxial cable upgrade.

Telstra product group managing director Holly Kramer told CommsDay the T-Box would include two high-definition tuners, a 200GB hard drive for personal video recorder functionality and a seven-day electronic program guide. “It will also seamlessly integrate seven Bigpond TV exclusive channels, with content like live news TV, racing TV, a general sports channel, NRL, AFL... V8 Supercar TV and Music,” she said. “Customers will also be able to order and download movies from our Bigpond movies service and play them within a few minutes.” The T-Box will be manufactured by French company NetGem.

The Melbourne STB trial is expected to last several months, and will be conducted across Telstra’s HFC network. Telstra is also expected to announce that upgrades to its Melbourne HFC network are now complete and delivering 100Mbps connections, but Kramer would not comment on the upgrade.

“We’re planning to launch [T-Box] later next year, and we are planning to launch it nationally over both (ADSL and cable) networks,” she said. “It works on any network... One of the things we’re trialling is the experience at different speeds, we think it’s really important to trial this in the market for a few months for a range of things like the customer experience of setting up the service, of using the service, the quality of the content, the performance over various networks.” The device is also expected to have built in Wi-Fi, meaning it could easily connect to an existing wireless-enabled ADSL router.

“We believe that it should be a good experience... with anything from a 1 to 1.5Mbps service all the way up through cable extreme and through to a super-fast network,” she said.

Kramer said it was too early to comment on pricing, but said the T-Box would likely be bundled with broadband services and would offer quota-free movie downloads. “We’ll obviously be looking at how we bundle up this service with our broadband service,” she said. “It will be competitive with any other digital tuner or PVR in the market.”

WON’T CANNIBALISE FOXTEL? Kramer denied the T-Box was being set up as a competitor to Foxtel – of which Telstra owns a 50% stake. “We see this is as a complimentary service to Foxtel,” she said. “Foxtel is obviously the premium brand for subscription television, and this is really for customers who’ve chosen not to go with that proposition. This is actually a proposition which brings internet and on-demand content without cannibalising [Foxtel revenues]... even to people who have a Foxtel IQ service in the home, they may not have it on every TV set so this can compliment that... even within a single household.”

In a move which would likely soothe any Foxtel unease over the T-Box, Kramer said Telstra was working with the pay TV company to allow its ‘On-Demand’ internet based catch-up service onto Foxtel IQ devices. “We are working with Foxtel to bring, over a broadband connection, their on-demand content to the IQ box as well,” she said. But Foxtel On Demand is unlikely to be found on the T-Box. “The focus with T-Box is more with internet-based content... rather than premium high-quality broadcast content like Foxtel.”

Kramer said it was the company’s “strategic intent” to sign up additional internet TV services to the TBox, but would not confirm if the company was in talks with the ABC to access its iView content.

Luke Coleman