Telstra, one of Australia’s most expensive telecommunications providers, recently announced a new digital set-top box, 'T-Box', as well as two new gateways - the ‘BigPond Velocity Home Network Gateway,’ and the ‘BigPond Ultimate Cable Home Network Gateway.’

T-Box, which heats up the home entertainment market, is an internet-enabled personal video recorder, or PVR, that will be available across Australia in 2010. The device comprises a 200GB hard drive and electronic program guide.

Elaborating about T-Box, the Telstra director of product management Holly Kramer said that the device will enable users not only to watch and record free-to-air TV and pause and rewind live TV, but also provide them integrated access to exclusive BigPond internet TV channels as well as a movie download store.

Meanwhile, Telstra’s rolling out the BigPond Velocity Home Network Gateway implies a team-up with the Telstra Velocity Network for the purpose of supporting speeds of up to 100Mbps for home Internet users from December 1.

About the gateway, Kramer said: “This means that Melbourne now has the fastest (hybrid fibre coaxial) cable network in the country.”

Further, the BigPond Ultimate Cable Home Network Gateway, featuring four Gigabit Ethernet ports; 802.11n Wi-Fi; and a separate 802.11n USB Wi-Fi adaptor, is particularly designed for DOCSIS 3.0 cable broadband.

Both the newly-announced gateways have been attuned to Windows XP, Vista, Windows 7 and Apple Mac OS X 10.4, 10.5 and 10.6 systems.