Stan is a relatively new comer to the streaming market in Australia and is a joint venture between channel Nine and Fairfax. Stan looked to concentrate on what is important in a streaming service, and that is content. Above all else content is important. At their launch Stan had exclusive rights to Better Call Saul, and new episodes were available the same day (or day after) their were aired on AMC in the USA. Stan also have exclusive content from America, including Transparent from Amazon Prime and Dig from the USA Network.
Content: 4 stars.
There is an awful lot of content in Stan, including multiple complete seasons of Star Trek, the entire Bond movie collection, and a lot of ‘fast tracked’ content from America. Stan have also started to produce their own content starting with a police comedy series No Activity, and most recently an original TV series based on the Wolf Creek movies.
Video quality: 4 stars.
The video quality on an Apple TV is very good, up there with other streaming services. They even seem to have gotten the HD remastered versions of Star Trek The Next Generation, it looks better than DVD.
Audio quality: 4 stars.
The 5.1 audio on most content is good. Like some other services I’ve struggled to get 5.1 out of a Chromecast, but it works great on an Apple TV.
Device Support: 3 stars.
While Stan support Android and Apple, they limit the device support on Android to particular models, so I can’t use my Xiaomi Mi Pad to watch anything (Netflix works fine on it). The Apple TV app is good, it is exactly the same as every other app on Apple TV. I have not used the app on the Telstra TV box, but I imagine it would be very similar to other Roku apps.
User Experience: 3.5 stars.
Stan remembers where I am in any particular episode, and what the next episode is in a series I am watching. It is not currently searchable using the universal search on any platform.
Overall Value: High.
At $10(AUD) a month there is a lot of content available, on a wide variety of platforms, with new content being added all the time.