Foxtel Play Review: Winter is coming… in SD

There’s a lot to love about Foxtel Play, and more to hate.

In theory, Foxtel Play sounds great. No monthly contracts. Different, genre-based packages to cater to your television-watching preferences. Access — legally — to Game of Thrones without a monthly Foxtel subscription.

Sadly, in practice, it’s a bit of a mess.

Foxtel Play is available on a number of different platforms, and for what it’s worth and sets out to do, it works well. You can watch live TV on a number of different Foxtel channels (again, depending on the genre-based packages you add to your account) and select on-demand streaming items like the aforementioned juggernaut Game of Thrones. Things load super quick, and UI elements are solid, providing an easy-to-use channel guide.

Before we go any further, it needs to be said that all content on Foxtel Play is delivered in SD quality.

That’s probably why everything loads so quickly, eh?

I’m definitely spoiled by Netflix and Hulu Plus; I was sitting — quite patiently, I might add — waiting for WWE Raw on Fox 8 to ‘pop-in’ when I first loaded up the live feed.

You know what that means, right? Most streaming services start off in SD and then make a very visable bump-up to HD quality. It’s something I encounter with streaming services ranging from Netflix to my NHL GameCenter account.

Foxtel Play never popped in. It made me sad, and made me think of streaming services in the mid-2000s.

Game of Thrones looked okay in SD, but I knew ‘dem dragons could look better.

Worse yet, I used my NHL GameCenter subscription to stream the Detroit Red Wings game in high quality on my computer, and winced in pain as I loaded up the sometimes-blocky Fox Sports equivalent on my Xbox One. I couldn’t even the see the puck, at times, on Fox Sports’ feed.

Let me put it this way: I turned my NHL GameCenter feed to “medium” quality, and it looked equivalent to what Fox Sports was broadcasting. I almost vomited and quickly bumped it back up to “high”.

Once you go HD, you never go back. Or, at the very least, you complain an awful lot if you’re forced to.

The bottom line is this: if you’re unable to get a Foxtel subscription at your home — I wasn’t for the longest time until a satellite was installed on the top of my apartment building’s roof — or just want to have access to specific content at a specific time — hello, AFL fans — Foxtel Play will work for you.

For $70 AUD a month, you can get access to Entertainment (Fox 8, MTV, Lifestyle), Sports (um… sports) and Premium Movies & Drama (Showcase and Game of Thrones). In SD. It’s cheaper than in the past, but for what Foxtel’s offering in terms of streaming quality, I think Australians can do better.

Foxtel Play, ultimately, is a bit of a hard sell. That said, newcomers can sign up for two free weeks to see, first-hand, how the service works. Give it a try if haven’t, and cross your fingers Foxtel bumps their offering up to HD quality soon.

Foxtel Play is available now on Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3 and PS4.

The Foxtel Play service was reviewed on Xbox One, thanks to a trial provided by Foxtel.