musicMAX never became MTV Classic Australia … musicMAX (along with the V channels) was wholly owned and operated by Foxtel Networks at the time of it’s closure … when the music video channels were all wholly outsourced to MTV Networks Australia.
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Wasn’t it called Mosaic ? I remember CETV (predecessor to Austar in regional VIC).
Movie Network (One, Extra Greats, Starpics, FMC) was an entity owned by Warner / Disney / MGM / Village Roadshow - initially it was only available on Optus, and an a package on Austar - it was only later in the piece that it became available to Foxtel.
Foxtel had always offered the PMP (Premium Movie Partnership) package of channels (Showtime, Encore etc) - PMP was basically owned by the other major studios.
Eventually both packages were available on Foxtel - then Foxtel took over PMP - then signed up all of the studios, and Movie Network shut down.
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Early on, before it was on austar it was known (at least amongest where i lived on the NSW / Vic Border) how to get into the austar service menu, change the frequency the box scanned at and get the movie network channels - presumably they used the same encryption as austar? i don’t know i was only a teen at the time and didn’t care for the technical
Doug Mulray Music Max breakfast promo
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What was thebasement, it sounds like an early internet radio station?
it was Max’s breakfast show. It didn’t last long, only a couple of weeks IIRC.
I’m pretty sure it was a tie-in with The Basement music venue, which was a reasonably iconic live music venue in Sydney for a few decades*, but I can’t remember if they were running an early internet radio station at the time; it does ring a bell.
* The original venue in Circular Quay closed in 2018 - a similar Melbourne basement venue’s taken over the name and is looking for a new Sydney venue; while another operator’s taken over the original venue since.
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Remember the Australian version of TechTV?
Wasn’t around for long, launched for Foxtel Digital and was replaced when the US version merged with G4, with Crime & Investigation Channel.
Was this basically a Foxtel channel?
Albeit not of Foxtel’s fault to be fair; the decision by Comcast (who owned G4) to pull the international feed at the end of 2004, rather than distribute the newly merged channel. Was mainly just really bad timing, although yeah, it meant it lasted less than a year here.
The TechTV part was dumped off the merged channel’s name in the US barely weeks after [it remained for a while in Canada because CRTC format rules wouldn’t have fit the G4 peg into the TechTV format hole] and it’s hard to know whether the “video game culture” stuff G4 focused on would’ve worked here; it was quite a bit different from some of TechTV’s remit. Certainly CI would’ve rated much more so, as much as cable channels really “rate”, given the interest in the true crime genre.
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Loved it - Call for Help with Leo Laporte, the screen savers, so much good nerdy content.
Except it basically just aired old content on loop plus new Canadian CFH/The Lab for a while.
Correct, but they also couldn’t run much of G4’s content as it they still needed to fit within the CRTC licence for TechTV - hence why the name stuck around (at least in combined “G4TechTV” format) for a few more years, and they still had to find (mainly overnight) space for old shows even after going all G4 branding. It only closed in Canada in 2017, oddly enough a couple of years later than the US parent’s original run ended.
Does anyone know what year Foxtel stopped Foxsports Play and released all the current sports channels they had at the time to streaming platforms?
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Around 2016. I started having Foxtel in Q4 2011
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Hey there! As far as I know, Foxtel stopped offering Foxsports Play and released all their current sports channels to streaming platforms back in 2019. So, it’s been a few years since the transition happened.
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The very first time I had Foxtel was via Foxtel on xbox 360 way back in 2012 I only really had it on and off due to the fact that there were really only two sports channels at the time and non of them were showing nrl. The next year we got the tbox then the next year went to an IQ2. I know that in 2014 Foxtel on Xbox changed from sports play to all the channels so I would say this was the start.
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You could be thinking of Footy play this was around a bit longer. I’m not sure if 2019 is the right year but I know it was after then 2016.
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