NZFF

Hi all, just a random off topic question. Does anyone have telstra cable tv? Is it any good? I've not particularly heard anything good about it (most saying "get sky instead" )
I'm moving soon, and I think to a telstra cable area here in Christchurch, and my wife seems to think it will be a good idea to get it. But I'm not so sure.
Any thoughts?

If you take it as a phone/internet/TV package, then it works out a lot cheaper than phone plus sky. We had it for a couple of years, until we moved from Christchurch, and never regretted it. Now that I'm moving back to Christchurch, though, and going back to TC for phone and cable, I won't be having their TV until my income improves a bit.

We have Telstra at our Wellington place, and Sky at our Wairarapa house. I'd say Sky is better, but they're both pretty similar really. Although that's coming from someone who doesn't pay the bills

I've got the phone/internet/tv package and it is definitly cheaper than getting sky ontop of phone and internet. Cable modem also seems faster than broadband so thats good. Had sky in the old place and there really isn't much of a difference. Though there is only RCA outputs on the TC one where sky had some other outputs, which I can't remember what they are called.

We were some of the original Saturn / Telstra Clear customers in Paraparam, it was fantastic. Only time we ever had an issue was when a car took out the lamp post about 1 km donw the road and brought the cable down.
Biggest regret about moving was having to deal with Telecom again after nine years of bliss.

Cable Internet is the same speed as ADSL2+ (there abouts) So therefore, speeds of up to 24mbps are achievable. In Australia at least, dont know the situation in NZ.

Telstra cable TV is OK but the big drawback is you cannot get a decoder with component out which means for High def TV's you screwed with a worse picture (ie 40 inch LCD looks cr@p), I understand they are looking at better decoders though when they get them could be anyones guess

Interesting, thanks for the insight guys.. I have a 42 inch LCD, so by the sounds of things it wouldn't be a good idea.. Maybe I can just buy a freeview HD decoder lol.. so many options.

I've never had TC Cable TV but I understand quite a bit of it is just rebroadcasted Sky stuff with more compression and stuff chucked on.

It would be good if TelstraClear served Rotorua as I'm keen to ditch Telecom.
I've heard nothing about good things about their internet and their customer service as well, which is good.

Other good thing about TC Cable is that they're more likley to offer HD content than Sky as they aren't quite as limited as Sky in the way of satellite bandwidth etc although they don't seem to have much or any HD stuff at all right now.

What sorta channels do you get with it???

We have Telsta, it's great. Not many problems.

My cusion has Telstra (digital decoder) and on their 42" Plasma it looks fine, and on their (anologe decoder) 32" LCD looks good aswell.

So the digital decoder is out then? Cool, up until Dan's post I was starting to warm up to the idea

You get all the sky channels with TC, plus one or two others.

ZK-Brock wrote:

QUOTE (ZK-Brock @ Jul 13 2008, 08:29 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

What sorta channels do you get with it???

Airtrainer wrote:

QUOTE (Airtrainer @ Jul 13 2008, 10:33 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You get all the sky channels with TC, plus one or two others.

Just the same as Sky, it depends what channels you subscribe to. It has pretty much the same ones available, you just pay for what you think you'll watch.

NZ255 wrote:

QUOTE (NZ255 @ Jul 13 2008, 08:36 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

We have Telsta, it's great. Not many problems.

My cusion has Telstra (digital decoder) and on their 42" Plasma it looks fine, and on their (anologe decoder) 32" LCD looks good aswell.

yeh once you see a comparable decoder that has component out then you will see a big difference in picture, only Sky has a component out decoder at the moment and thier new SkyFi has HDMI out which I really want as it means full HD once they switch the chanels on.