NOW TV

I can't confirm if this works, but there's a £20pm Sky Sports Month Pass offer for four months using the code SPMUWAQXWJSR.

There's also a Mobile only Sky Sports Pass for £5.99pm.

Some decent Black Friday deals for new and existing customers around this week including 1 year Entertainment for £45, Cinema for £55 and 9 months sport for £179.

https://www.nowtv.com/black-friday

I had the £99 offer last year. Unfortunately never mind what the website says you can't apply it again until the old one runs out. Now I have it again, cheap and cheerful way to get more stuff to fall asleep to, uh I mean watch in bed

The £106 Stick offer was tempting but since I already have a box, it seemed pointless. The answer is probably not but does anybody know if the remotes are interchangeable between the black NowTV box and the new Stick?

The Android app has been updated with subtitles for all films on VOD via the Sky Cinema pass and selected tv series on the Entertainment pass.

I'd missed this earlier this month.

Sky Sports Racing will join NOW TV on 8th January 2019

Hi Gary - Sky Sports Racing will be available via NOW TV to anyone taking out a Sky Sports day, week or month pass (from Tuesday 8th January). More info: https://t.co/RqsViieKC0

— At The Races (@AtTheRaces) December 5, 2018

The latest software update for Smart Boxes, sticks and standard boxes sees a revamp of the Sky News app which was dreadful before and Demand 5 is now My5.

Couple of ‘invalid token’ errors on the revised Sky News app on the 4K box following the update for me.

I got a £1 offer on the Sky Sports Mobile Pass (normally £5.99pm), only four channels are available, these are:

Sky Sports Premier League
Sky Sports Action
Sky Sports Arena
Sky Sports News

Sainsbury's are doing the 4K Smart Box with a free pass for £20. I decided to buy one and prefer the new way of installing the box. No need to fumble around with the remote to sign in, with a much more sophisticated set up of the box.

Gold streams a lot better as well. I found with the 1st Gen box that the stream would stutter.

I haven't got round to using the search feature, but overall, an improvement on the 1st Gen Smart Box, even if it's lost Freeview, which is no major loss.

Edit: The AFR feature is also excellent, unlike the Shield where I have to manually adjust it, on Netflix it's changing between 24Hz, 50Hz and 60Hz.

Yes - the lack of automatic, or app-driven, frame rate switching on the nVidia Shield TV is now really annoying. There were suggestions it nearly made the last Shield Experience update but was pulled (alongside Rec 709/Rec 2020 gamut switching). Fingers crossed it arrives soon.

Google seem to have a blind-spot when it comes to frame rates - both Chromecast and Android TV fail badly in this respect. (Kodi on the Shield TV handles frame rate switching OK though) It's a real shame. I guess it's ok to fix at 59.94Hz in the US where people are used to 3:2 (or their TV's remove it)

The most recent Apple TV and Roku streaming solutions handle frame rate switching (and gamut switching) well - with the Amazon Fire TV Stick doing it in some apps (Prime Video) but not other others (iPlayer, Netflix...)

It appears they've left it as the responsibility of app owners to add AFR if you have Android TV/Shield of which there is Kodi and the IPTV app Perfect Player that have the functionality (along with the French service Molotov), yet the big apps like Prime Video and Netflix don't.