Now TV review, pluses and minuses
Posted: January 31st, 2018, 11:19 am
We’ve had it a month or two now and thought this might be useful to other contemplating Now Tv.
We took out a deal with broadband, TV (+ smart box, not the standard one) and PAYG phone line.
Pros
- The biggest one: cost. We are saving a third on our previous sky bill (£30 vs £45/month). We audited what we watch before committing and have not found any programmes or channels we’re missing now. That said, we have just found out we are tied into paying full price for the entertainment pass. You can buy these discounted online, but at £7.99/month, it’s not the end of the world. We may be able to apply discounted cinema/sport passes though (as that is not part of our package) – yet to confirm that.
- The other biggest one: internet. We went from terrible, intermittent <2mb Sky broadband to 30+mb FTTC speeds (as per explanatory link here viewtopic.php?f=39&t=8445#p96518). Sky refused to accept there were any issues and blamed us for any problems, so we were quite pleased to call them and tell them we were leaving.
- It was all easy to set up, simple remote and (once you get the hang of it) easy to navigate. Watching box sets or series is very easy. Live TV is also fine, issues with the schedule (below) notwithstanding. OH is enjoying all the HD channels.
Cons
- Lack of future TV guide. There is “now and next” and that’s it. No 7 day planner. You can use an online guide (or paper magazine) of course, but it’s a minor faff. This means I barely watch any live TV now at all as I never know what’s on when.
- I miss not being able to record things, but I am slowly getting used to the concept of watch later, with the limitations below as a caveat.
- The disparate nature of watching what you want- this is my main bugbear. Sure it’s all there, after a fashion, but instead of going to one Sky+ recordings page, we now have to remember what programmes are on what catch up service and pick from any one of:
o BBC iPlayer (by far the best catch up service - very good, nice layout, easy to use)
o ITV Player (only shows limited selection of programmes, and from memory don’t think you can save stuff so you have to make a note. Also rubbish search)
o C4 On Demand (Not bad, but a bit clunky. You can save stuff though)
o C5 on demand (very similar to ITV)
o (All the above commercial channels may or may not have adverts or trailers on any given show. You can’t FF these)
o The Now TV section itself, which I’ll cover separately below
o (+ Netflix, but that was always separate to Sky anyway)
Now TV
This is a section in its own right. You press a special Now TV button on the remote and that gets you access to the part where you can watch live tv according to what passes you have (we only have entertainment). Within that there’s a section called My TV which is split into Watching and Watchlist.
- Watching is a page of programmes or series you are in the middle of. But even if you start watching something and decide it’s rubbish, it stays on this page (presumably till its full/some defined time has passed with no viewing and then gets dropped off?). You can’t manually delete stuff off here.
- Watchlist is a page of programmes you have added. In theory it’s good, but in practice it’s a PITA. Firstly because each programme has its own big picture thumbnail, sorted alphabetically (no option to change). You can’t show as a list so you have to scroll a lot to see everything, and any “go back” action puts you back at the top of the page again. I think I recall reading somewhere the list runs to 200 items before you start losing stuff? We are at about 30 shows and it’s already annoying. Second, each programme often comes with multiple thumbnails. E.g. both The Walking Dead and Scandal have 3 images each – I think for when they are shown on different channels or special episodes etc. Whatever, it’s not editable and very annoying. If you delete the “special episode”, for example, it deletes all the others too.
- There is no proactive alert to say when any programmes will be removed. Sometimes you go in and they are just greyed out and tough luck. There may be a “last chance” icon but I have yet to spot one in action!
Conclusion
Overall, it is OK. If you’re used to Sky or Virgin all-in-one interfaces, it’s a bit clunky and tedious in places, but the £ savings and internet improvement make it worthwhile for now. I don’t know what amazing TV I may be missing because I don’t get to see any trailers any more, but social media, TV reviews and friends and family will invariably mention anything especially good. If Sky come up with a good enough offer later in the year we might go back (if the internet is acceptable). We signed up for a no contract deal so can leave any time (you can sign up for a year to get cheaper prices if you want)
HTH
Sats
We took out a deal with broadband, TV (+ smart box, not the standard one) and PAYG phone line.
Pros
- The biggest one: cost. We are saving a third on our previous sky bill (£30 vs £45/month). We audited what we watch before committing and have not found any programmes or channels we’re missing now. That said, we have just found out we are tied into paying full price for the entertainment pass. You can buy these discounted online, but at £7.99/month, it’s not the end of the world. We may be able to apply discounted cinema/sport passes though (as that is not part of our package) – yet to confirm that.
- The other biggest one: internet. We went from terrible, intermittent <2mb Sky broadband to 30+mb FTTC speeds (as per explanatory link here viewtopic.php?f=39&t=8445#p96518). Sky refused to accept there were any issues and blamed us for any problems, so we were quite pleased to call them and tell them we were leaving.
- It was all easy to set up, simple remote and (once you get the hang of it) easy to navigate. Watching box sets or series is very easy. Live TV is also fine, issues with the schedule (below) notwithstanding. OH is enjoying all the HD channels.
Cons
- Lack of future TV guide. There is “now and next” and that’s it. No 7 day planner. You can use an online guide (or paper magazine) of course, but it’s a minor faff. This means I barely watch any live TV now at all as I never know what’s on when.
- I miss not being able to record things, but I am slowly getting used to the concept of watch later, with the limitations below as a caveat.
- The disparate nature of watching what you want- this is my main bugbear. Sure it’s all there, after a fashion, but instead of going to one Sky+ recordings page, we now have to remember what programmes are on what catch up service and pick from any one of:
o BBC iPlayer (by far the best catch up service - very good, nice layout, easy to use)
o ITV Player (only shows limited selection of programmes, and from memory don’t think you can save stuff so you have to make a note. Also rubbish search)
o C4 On Demand (Not bad, but a bit clunky. You can save stuff though)
o C5 on demand (very similar to ITV)
o (All the above commercial channels may or may not have adverts or trailers on any given show. You can’t FF these)
o The Now TV section itself, which I’ll cover separately below
o (+ Netflix, but that was always separate to Sky anyway)
Now TV
This is a section in its own right. You press a special Now TV button on the remote and that gets you access to the part where you can watch live tv according to what passes you have (we only have entertainment). Within that there’s a section called My TV which is split into Watching and Watchlist.
- Watching is a page of programmes or series you are in the middle of. But even if you start watching something and decide it’s rubbish, it stays on this page (presumably till its full/some defined time has passed with no viewing and then gets dropped off?). You can’t manually delete stuff off here.
- Watchlist is a page of programmes you have added. In theory it’s good, but in practice it’s a PITA. Firstly because each programme has its own big picture thumbnail, sorted alphabetically (no option to change). You can’t show as a list so you have to scroll a lot to see everything, and any “go back” action puts you back at the top of the page again. I think I recall reading somewhere the list runs to 200 items before you start losing stuff? We are at about 30 shows and it’s already annoying. Second, each programme often comes with multiple thumbnails. E.g. both The Walking Dead and Scandal have 3 images each – I think for when they are shown on different channels or special episodes etc. Whatever, it’s not editable and very annoying. If you delete the “special episode”, for example, it deletes all the others too.
- There is no proactive alert to say when any programmes will be removed. Sometimes you go in and they are just greyed out and tough luck. There may be a “last chance” icon but I have yet to spot one in action!
Conclusion
Overall, it is OK. If you’re used to Sky or Virgin all-in-one interfaces, it’s a bit clunky and tedious in places, but the £ savings and internet improvement make it worthwhile for now. I don’t know what amazing TV I may be missing because I don’t get to see any trailers any more, but social media, TV reviews and friends and family will invariably mention anything especially good. If Sky come up with a good enough offer later in the year we might go back (if the internet is acceptable). We signed up for a no contract deal so can leave any time (you can sign up for a year to get cheaper prices if you want)
HTH
Sats