Mass Media & Technology

NOW TV

Now just er...NOW. (October 2014)

This site closed in March 2021 and is now a read-only archive
LL
Larry the Loafer
Wasn't there talk of Sky introducing IPTV to the UK regardless of Now TV's status?
WO
Woodpecker
Yes, there was. For now, I expect they’re using Austria to test the waters before rolling it out to other regions.
LL
London Lite Founding member
Pure speculation on my part, but NOW TV and Sky Go share the same infrastructure, which includes sharing the same streams. The same channels in SD on Now TV are the same on Sky Go and the Sky branded channels are identical as well.

This makes me think that when Sky's new IPTV service for those customers who can't get satellite will launch, Sky Go and Now TV will also switch to sharing the same infrastructure, allowing both Go and Now to offer 1080.

In other news, the Sky Cinema Pass is going up £2 to £11.99 in April, which makes the 2 month pre-paid pass even more value for money.
NJ
Neil Jones Founding member
At £11.99 I note Now TV's prices are slowly coming into line with the main Sky packages.

Sky Cinema through Sky is £11 for in contract and Entertainment itself is supposed to be £22 (though there are no end of new and existing customer deals that can knock this down if you sign up for forever and a day Smile) and I wouldn't be surprised if the ultimate end result between Sky and NowTV a few years down the line comes down to the simple fact you can have Cinema on its own on NowTV as opposed to having Entertainment and Cinema with no contract and there's little difference in price.
JA
jake-watson
the launch of SkyX is interesting with its offer of entertainment and cinema bundle.

This really goes up again amazon and Netflix who offer both movies and TV shows in the same package (fiction and live tv for €19.99.

makes sense to brand the service sky, with comcasts plan to make the now tv service "free".
Last edited by jake-watson on 6 March 2019 5:39pm - 2 times in total
NG
noggin Founding member
I wonder how closely linked SkyX and the long-awaited Dishless-Sky are - and whether the latter will actually happen post-Comcast?

It looks to me as if SkyX is a new take on NowTV (no ISP tie-in so unicast not multicast?). Be interesting to see how good the quality is.

If it's using DASH adaptive streaming peaking at 1080p50 or 720p50p (like iPlayer, ZDF Mediathek, some of the CMore live streams etc.) then it may be a go-er. If it's 1080p25 or 720p25 then it's not going to be a direct replacement for some of us and will have the same issues that Amazon TV channels has of sub-par motion for sport, entertainment etc. (Strictly at 25p is horrible...)

1080p50 HEVC/h.265 seems to need around 3.5Mbs - peaking at around 8Mbs - for 'emission quality' in Germany on DVB-T2. The 2.5Mbs may be to support be the lowest DASH bitrate it uses I guess (SD/540p?) - but may offer higher quality at higher bitrates.

Will be interesting to see.
DV
DVB Cornwall
Considerable speculation that some Movie feeds are being fed out on some platforms in 'Full' HD now. Not fully convinced myself currently. (My viewing is via the AppleTV Beta at the moment, so I can't confirm on a live commercial stream, I've disconnected my NOW and Roku devices at present)
NJ
Neil Jones Founding member
Considerable speculation that some Movie feeds are being fed out on some platforms in 'Full' HD now. Not fully convinced myself currently. (My viewing is via the AppleTV Beta at the moment, so I can't confirm on a live commercial stream, I've disconnected my NOW and Roku devices at present)


I'd like to hope it's sort of automatic, otherwise those individuals who don't have a decent internet connection for whatever reason (by choice, can't get it or live in the middle of nowhere) won't see much HD if it buffers all the time.

Mind you that being said Netflix suggests you can get away with a 5Mb connection for HD streaming, though presumably that's if only you stream - other people doing other internet type things on the same connection will eat into that.
LL
London Lite Founding member
Live streams still appear to be 720p/25 or SD at the moment.

However, I've noticed some improvement in some of the VOD content on the Cinema Pass. That may be down to it being 720p/50fps rather than being 1080p.

As I type, I currently have Citizen Khan through the 4K box on VOD and that seems to be 720/50.
NG
noggin Founding member
Considerable speculation that some Movie feeds are being fed out on some platforms in 'Full' HD now. Not fully convinced myself currently. (My viewing is via the AppleTV Beta at the moment, so I can't confirm on a live commercial stream, I've disconnected my NOW and Roku devices at present)


If you can, enable the developer HUD on Apple TV. That will tell you what the Apple TV h.264/h.265 decoder is being fed in resolution, frame rate, bit rate, dynamic range terms etc. You do need a Mac with Xcode installed to do that ISTR - and possibly a free developer account.

It's very useful for seeing what the various OTT apps are being fed from upstream (Amazon Prime Video can often be half the bitrate of Netflix for UHD content...)
NG
noggin Founding member
Live streams still appear to be 720p/25 or SD at the moment.

However, I've noticed some improvement in some of the VOD content on the Cinema Pass. That may be down to it being 720p/50fps rather than being 1080p.

As I type, I currently have Citizen Khan through the 4K box on VOD and that seems to be 720/50.


I thought Citizen Khan was shot 25p? (Wasn't it one of those odd 'studio sitcom but 25p' shows - or am I misremembering? Interesting that Sky have picked that up for VoD too)
JA
james-2001
The first series was 50i, then they stuck the film look on from series 2.

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