A Stellar System

Illawarra Mercury

Thursday March 6, 2008

GLEN HUMPHRIES

You'll never miss the end of a film, or an episode of your favourite TV show, again with Austar's MyStar system, says GLEN HUMPHRIES.

The biggest problem with Austar's digital recording system MyStar is that it wasn't released a few months ago.

Around that time, we had our first child. Also around that time, one of the movie channels was screening a basketball movie called Glory Road.

As anyone who has had children knows, they're not all that willing to let you sit down and watch a whole movie from start to finish. Instead, I had to watch the movie in fits and starts, catching a few minutes of it every time it aired. It took me a month but I finally saw the whole film - though it was totally out of sequence, I'd seen the end two weeks before the middle.

Back then, if I'd had MyStar (the equivalent of Foxtel's IQ system), I could have simply pressed the red "R" button on the remote and have the movie recorded and waiting for me to play it back at my leisure. And that is flat-out the most appealing aspect of MyStar. With 60 hours of hard-drive recording available, you can twist the TV schedule to your advantage.

Rather than having to wait for a show to be aired at a convenient time, (risking the chance of missing it altogether) you can record it and watch it whenever you want. In our house, that means always having a movie to watch in that prime viewing time after the baby's gone to sleep.

At its heart MyStar is like a digital video recorder or an old VCR in that it records television. But it offers an ease of setting up those recordings. Rather than having to set a timer on a VCR, all you have to do is go to the onscreen TV guide, find the show you're after and press the "record" button.

After the recording, hit the "planner" button and you'll be taken straight to where all the recorded shows are stored.

But there's a recording function on MyStar that leaves other recorders for dead - series link. While not available on every TV show, it enables you to record an entire series with just a push of a button. So every time an episode of that show airs, it'll be recorded automatically.

The other big benefit is the ability to pause live TV - including the free-to-air channels which, unlike the old Austar decoder, run through the MyStar box. To allow you to pause live TV MyStar needs to be constantly recording. This means the box does make a low humming noise (a combination of the whirring hard drive and cooling fan), which some may find distracting. But we found placing the unit on a bit of insulation (ie a cut-up piece of exercise mat) virtually wiped out any background noise.

There are a few glitches in the system - including a slight lag time in the images when changing channels or when loading the TV guide and planner. But none of these glitches come close to overriding the benefits MyStar offers.

The best thing about MyStar is that it lets you get more value out of Austar. You no longer have to miss a movie or TV show because it's on in the middle of the night or while you're at work.

Not even when you're looking after a baby.

As MyStar uses a different box and connections than the current decoder, there is a one-off installation fee of $49.95. The monthly subscription fee for MyStar is $14.95.