NOW TV

.... and more the odd 1080/25 Cinema content that was on the YV version over the past month in 'tests', intended or inadvertant we'll not know, seems to have been removed too in clearing down the error of last Thursday. The platform appears on a quick audit to be totally 720p again now.

I wonder what bitrate they are using for 1080p50 streams. If they are h.264 I'd hope it was North of 10Mbs. iPlayer falls apart on some taxing stuff at 720p50 5.3Mbs, and has a lot less information to carry.

1080p50 = 104M/"pixels" per second source
720p50 = 46M/"pixels" per second source

It's not a linear relationship between pixels per second and bitrate - but it shows you the additional challenge.

"pixels" = 8-bit luminance sample sites (plus 1/4 of Cr and Cb chroma samples - as each Cr and Cb sample covers 4 luminance samples) (So for 4:2:0 8-bit h.264 you can think of the format as 12-bits per pixel. 4 x 8 bit Y samples and 1 x 8 bit Cr and 1 x 8 bit Cb per 2x2 sample grid)

Amazon Prime Video is using 11-12Mbs h.264 for their Tennis 1080p50 streaming according to my Apple TV 4K developer HUD. (128k AAC audio)

I can't confirm this, but what I'm hearing is 8Mbs for 1080/25 and 11-12 for the two Sky Sports channels in 1080/50.

If I recall, the 720/25 live streams are 4.8Mbs. The early days of NOW TV was strictly 2.5Mbs for live Ent and 3.5/4 for sport.

If anybody's interested the £99 for 12 months cinema and entertainment deal has appeared again today, same deal I've had for the last three years. Can't complain at £8.25 a month

Tried to take that up but disappears when you log in so cancelled expecting a nice "stay with us" offer as a result and got a just a 3 months for £4.99 offer.

I don't think you can have it if you already have active passes and it doesn't show up if you go to cancel. Mine had all expired from last year's deal and it looked like the offer wasn't going to be repeated until I spotted it by chance. Believe it expired yesterday.

The rule used to be applied that you were only permitted to have and accept a further offer if ....

1. You have no current pass for the genre being offered.
or
2. You have a current fully paid pass expiring in the next 30 days.
or
3. You have no previously reduced pass (ie a previous offer OR a free offer reduced to zero) queued to run after the expiry of a current pass (or series of passes for a multimonth deal).

Basically if you're currently watching say Cinema it's damn near impossible to get onto another Cinema Customer Direct offer unless you comply with a very restricted range of circumstances.

The lack of the facility to immediately cancel a running pass and revert to no current pass status without a refund stymies the possibilities too.

The clock is ticking for the BT/NOWTV linkup to occur this year. With the industry tech change Christmas and New Year blocks coming into effect in the week beginning 16 Dec 2019 if it doesn't materialise by Monday Week, we can forget about it until January 2020 at the earliest.

We'll see.

Yesterday B&M were offering the Smart Stick for £9.99 with a month of Entertainment plus an option to obtain a free month of any pass by signing up online with them.

Looked this morning and the offer link doesn't work anymore.

Half price Cinema + Entertainment now available to existing subscribers in either a 3 month or 12 month deal - around £32 or £115.

I didn't receive those offers as I already have passes for those. Was offered sports passes for £10 for a week and £16.99 for a month.

Apparently Limited Customer trials on BTTV boxes are in progress. (BT Community Forums)