NOW TV

Also helps that most if not all of the 'Sky Box Sets' are part of NOW TV's Entertainment Pass.

The only thing to factor in is will you really miss Sky+ considering the catch up capability and do you mainly watch Sky 1, Atlantic, Arts, Living, FOX, Discovery, GOLD, Comedy Central, MTV or the kids channels of which NOW TV also offer catch-up of most shows. Some shows are also live only like The Simpsons and most of GOLD's schedule.

It's pretty much the case on Sky anyway, The Simpsons will probably never be on Catch-Up TV or Sky Box Sets.

The best of Sky's non premium channels are on NOW TV, and mostly the ones I watch.

Sky Atlantic managed to market itself well enough for it to become an established "quality" brand. I got the impression BT were simply saying "AMC is really good, honest, but you have to get BT to watch it" in its marketing.

Atlantic at least has the HBO back catalogue and recently has another exclusive deal with Showtime for the same.

What does AMC have? The Walking Dead after FOX UK shows the current series and that's about it along a very small BT TV customer base where as Atlantic is on Sky and NOW TV.

http://decipher-blog.co.uk/2016/02/19/a-smarter-version-of-now-sky-and-the-new-squeezed-middle-of-free-to-air/?utm_content=buffer1846a&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

Unless this box has at least a basic PVR ability (like the lower end Humax boxes which have a single tuner and a USB port for an external drive), I think its moment has already passed.

Would be good, but with the rights issues associated with recording and the NowTV concept, of a downloaded service, I doubt that any form of PVR up and beyond maybe a small IPTV buffer, something that holds back the existing products, will be considered. We're looking at £60 maximum retail with a pass thrown in, in my view.

What rights issues? As long as you ensure the content is DTCP (or equivalent?) encrypted when recorded you don't have any major issues do you?

That keeps you Freeview HD compliant AIUI. It's also why you can't play recordings made to external drives on Freeview HD compliant TVs with PVR functionality (or Freeview HD PVRs with USB external media backups) on anything else other than the TV that recorded them. (SD content not be covered by the same rules.

It's not the freeview stuff, it's the IPTV material, transferring the principal that applies to YouView's IPTV delivered content, that when you no longer subscribe any IPTV content is wiped would be problematic. If a viewer failed to renew a short-term pass, for whatever reason, losing content wouldn't be so readily appreciated. Applying recording to one type of content and not the other would raise issues of clarity of the products specifications too.

I'd only expect the PVR functionality to be for Freeview content. NowTV isn't really IPTV like BT's platform is it (broadcast quality DVB over IP) - it's more like streaming ?

Depends on the platform. As you'd expect, tablet/mobile streaming isn't nowhere near DVB quality. Yet Chromecast PQ is pretty decent, especially for movies and sport, same for the LG TV app. The NOW TV box is hard to tell thanks to the 60Hz issue.

I'm talking more about the delivery methods - and their applicability to PVR functionality. If you use DVB over IP you get all the benefits of EPG, EIT triggers for recording etc. If you use HLS or HDS type streaming you don't, and they are closer to the old 'Flash' based browser viewing systems.

I agree that the BBC 720/50p iPlayer streams look great on Chromecast, but the way they are served makes them less suitable for PVR recording.

There are standards for encrypting DVB PVR recordings (as used by Freeview HD recorders) - but not sure about HLS/HDS stuff. How you deal with rights management is also an issue. (Sky have a very simple solution - they decrypt on replay on Sky+ not on recording)