The Foxtel Electronic Program Guide listed the Movie One
Timeslot on Monday night (5^th of Jan), as featuring a movie called
“Celine”.  Clicking on “i”
for info resulted in “no synopsis available”.

But my wife and I like Celine Dion, so at 8:30 we sat in front of the screen and watched ready
for the life of, or some such similar movie event.

Sure enough, her music came on and then the movie title –
“Blades of Glory” (which is certainly not a movie about Celine…..).

I’m not sure how many Cable company laws Foxtel broke, but
they sure broke the Trust barrier with us.

Maybe – they’re renaming movies so that it isn’t obvious how
many repeats are being shown on the movie channels.

Whilst I haven’t done any hard stats calculations, it does
appear to me that Foxtel are running repeats from one movie channel onto the
other and the cycle appears to be less than 
3 months. Therefore, if you only have one of the movie channels, that’s
ok, you will get the content three months later.

Based on the number of new releases on the Pay per view channels,
there appears to be less than 16 new movies per month. (When I say new… I mean
released in the Cinemas within the last thirty six months and released on DVD
within the last twelve months and available from your DVD store within the last
six months.)

And the pay per view, premium movies, just wait, they’ll be
on the regular movie channel in just three months and thereafter repeated every
three months.

Therefore if you go to the Cinema four times a year, hire a
DVD (or 2) 12 times a year. Foxtel have nothing to offer but reruns and repeats
strongly supported by self effacing adverts telling us how good they are.

If Foxtel cant get it right for paid subscribers, then what
hope is there for Australian Free to Air (FTA) Television.

As I said yesterday, Appointment Television is on the way
out.

Its interesting, but if I chose to download my movies from
P2P, (www.sharethefiles.com) then I
could be watching the latest movie – (not yet released in Australian cinemas)
within hours of making the selection choice.

And apart from legislative interference (i.e.: its illegal
to download movies) there are a lot of reasons why I should invest in a $69.95
per month upgrade to my $49.95 per month broadband.

The cost of the movies ($5.00 each).

The drive to and from the Video shop. (3 km each way – just
the Carbon footprint cost equals another $3.00 if I had to buy an offset)

The obligatory popcorn that I have to buy whilst Im there
AND the late fees when the boys lend the movie to their mates
who don’t return it for a week.

Its fun being a parent…….

Economically and environmentally, it would make sense to
upgrade our DSL connection, disconnect Foxtel and toss our video membership in
the bin.

A quick Spreadsheet to calculate the difference shows……

And with the $1200 dollar saving, I can buy a HUGE hard-disk
to store my movies. Mmmm tempting.

By the same token, if I kept the Foxtel connection, then I
wouldn’t exactly be stealing from the copyright owners, after all they are
getting paid by Foxtel from the subscriptions that I am currently paying for
movies that I saw three years ago.

In most jurisdictions, it is illegal to sell the Brooklyn
bridge more than once to the same customer.

Errr, Foxtel is paying the movie industry for all these
reruns ……….. ?

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