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Mobile game bans, SBS are movie fans and Telstra Air spans... Australia (Girt by CNET podcast 33)

Our new mobile classification scheme gets up and running, SBS unveils a killer update to its On Demand service and Telstra gets official with Air, its national Wi-Fi network.

Nic Healey Senior Editor / Australia
Nic Healey is a Senior Editor with CNET, based in the Australia office. His passions include bourbon, video games and boring strangers with photos of his cat.
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Nic Healey
2 min read

This week, news emerged that the entity formerly known as the Classification Board, and now just Classification Australia, smashed the banhammer down on 219 mobile games. Of course, that wasn't the whole story.

A further 150,000 games had also passed muster and were classified for the first time ever. It's all part of the new International Age Rating Coalition scheme that aims to take some of the weight off Classification Australia's shoulders and let the game developers themselves do a little heavy lifting. But can Australia cope with the loss of the Douchebag Beach Club game?

SBS On Demand is, unsurprisingly given the name, the video-on-demand service for SBS. While other channels might be calling it 'catch-up TV', SBS has redesigned On Demand and added a staggering amount of content: 4,000 hours of video and 600 feature movies all available on 22 different platforms. It's an incredible effort and it not only puts the spotlight on the efforts from the other networks, but it even sends a solid challenge to the likes of local subscription services Stan and Presto.

If you're lost in your love of Wi-Fi, then Telstra has your Air supply. That's a really funny sentence if you're really into Australian soft rock bands from the 80s. If you're not, then just know that Telstra has shut the gate on the trial of its free Wi-Fi hotspots around Australia and you'll now need to be a customer (and opt-in to sharing your own service) if you're after a breath of the newly rebranded Air.

Finally, in September of this year, FreeviewPlus turns one. We take a quick look at some of the facts and figures around what should have been the biggest change to broadcast TV since the digital switchover.

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IARC Classification system

SBS Revamps On Demand

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