NOW TV

After two attempts got nowhere it was 3rd time lucky with BT and pretty much halved my bill, which I was quite happy with until I saw Neil was paying £2 a month.

(Do have Fibre and was sure when I checked a few months back NowTV was an option hence surprising to see it wasn't when I checked the other day).

Have Now TV moved away from their discounted annual passes? My entertainment + cinema pass about to run out and can't see any deals about.

There was a £25-a-month 10 month pass available at the start of the football season, pay in bulk, save £8 a month.

Appears so, a post on the community forum seems to suggest the special sports pass they did for F1 (nine months I think it was) had to keep being extended as the season started so late, (which effectively became an annual pass) and it may be they can only have one annual pass offer in the system. Maybe it'll be back next year.

My £8.25 a month offer (the £99 one entertainment and cinema I think you refer to) I've had the last three years is no longer available. So I cancelled the passes and got 50% off the pair for six months, which is the next best thing, but I suppose I can't really complain at having had a bargain deal for three years straight so...

Which feels like nowhere near the saving the previous sub-£200 season passes were.


Yes, same one. The thing I find though is with a reasonably priced annual pass I'll renew without much thought but as soon as it becomes monthly I question if I need it and will probably hold off. As you say though there are cancellation offers to look out for, and I've got a couple of cinema vouchers too.

I don't think the F1 pass is relevant - they have the football season ticket and F1 overlapping and it wouldn't affect the other passes. I suspect they're a victim of their own success.

There were a lot of posts on the community forum saying that if there wasn't going to be the £99 offer they were off, as it was otherwise expensive.

Of course it's a Sky product, Sky's never been cheap whether you're watching it via satellite or the poor man's Sky Now TV. One person's value is another's overpriced being, though of course the selling point of Now is that a) you don't need a dish, b) you don't need a contract, and c) you can just take what you want channel wise, as opposed to the main Sky offering where you have to pay a minimum of £25 a month before anything else. Its not uncommon for an out-of-contract offering to be more expensive per month, the same thing happens in phone and broadband.

I do wonder sometimes whether we're at a point where streaming companies are going to out price themselves and get to a point where the users can see the offering isn't particularly good for money. On the one hand, there's always the apathetic users, those who just let it roll over (typically at full price) regardless, which feeds most of the finances, and then on the other there's those who only jump on board when there's an offer on and vanish when there isn't another one incoming...

After many years, the latest NOWTV app has launched on AppleTV today, fully equipped with HD, Boost and the extra streams. There's a discussion as to the audio standard availability. Still no catalogue of Sports Replay though although that's common across platforms.

The NOW TV Windows app has been updated - I think it now supports 5.1 surround sound - I've got my decoder set to Standard and the output of the PC to 5.1 and it sounds pretty spot on. Not sure if it's in full 1080p (I have Boost) or not, nothing for me to check it with.

Sky and Amazon have struck a multi-year deal which will see Now TV (as well as Sky Ticket in other Sky markets) be made available on 'selected' Fire TV devices from today (December 14th) . Likewise, Prime Video will be added to Sky Q today in time for the service's exclusive coverage of 2 Premier League matchdays.

That’s great news - Prime Video was the biggest omission from Sky Q’s app line up to date. Here’s Sky press release. Although I’m intrigued about Now TV apparently being launched on Fire TV devices in Ireland considering Amazon doesn’t support Fire TV in Ireland, for its own reasons which as ever are unclear.

https://www.skygroup.sky/en-gb/article/sky-and-amazon-team-up-to-bring-their-best-entertainment-together-in-time-for-christmas

I reckon next year hopefully, we'll see Paramount+ if it comes to the UK.
My guess it'll either merge or rebrand from My5

The app is up on my Firestick.

Using Developer Options, I can confirm that it works with NOW TV Boost. Most Ent pass channels are 1920x1080/25fps with the exception of Sky News which is for some reason 1280x720/25 despite being Full HD on the NOW TV 4K Box and on the Chromecast 3rd Gen.

Men in Black 3 on one of the live Sky Cinema Channels is coming in at between 16-20fps.