NOW TV

YouTube and YouTube Kids are already on Sky Q. I would say the only major apps that are missing from Sky Q are BritBox and Pluto TV.

I'm not sure if it's been mentioned, but Now TV seem to be really cutting down on the freebies and vouchers now.

It's been ages since I've seen a free month given away through the likes of Vodafone, SimplyBe, etc.

According to the Now TV website gift cards are no longer available and true enough, I couldn't see any at Wilko when I went yesterday.

The Tesco Clubcard redemption ends tomorrow.

Now TV sticks seem to be the only way to potentially get a discount, but circulation of these appears to be drying up and the offers are nowhere near as good as they were even this time last year.

If you cancel your pass on the NOW TV website, they offer retention deals on there.

Sometimes; not useful if you're setting up a new account though, or you're a returning customer (and there's not a deal).

In terms of sport, there's a captive audience at the moment. You have no option to watch the Premier League and everything else except to buy it to watch on TV. There was a start-of-season offer (not as generous as previous years, but an offer nonetheless) but given the circumstances NOWTV are probably not going to give away the product for less than they have to at the moment. With the *hope* that fans may be back in before the end of the season, more folk are probably taking up the short-term / one day flexibility of Now TV than subbing to Sky Sports for 6 months/12 months at a time.

We *may* see a voucher for the start of the F1 season, but that's it.

I guess that's true, but they are still offering a discount on the Sport pass currently (£25/month for 4 months, so not that generous but still).

And as alluded to earlier retention discounts offered during the cancellation flow are still common. I got offered 6 months of Cinema @ £5.99/month and 6 months of Entertainment at £5/month yesterday, and this was cancelling free trials on a brand new account which had so far spent nothing.

It seems Now TV are adjusting their business model and decreasing their reliance on third party sales and physical playback devices.

The problem with the physical passes is that they were easily resold on eBay and other third-party sales sites at prices much cheaper than the RRP.

NOW TV did get round it by ensuring only the account holder could redeem them by activating a new Smart Stick or 4K Box.

I think some of these changes are down to the way Comcast does things, there were obviously too many physical devices manufactured by Roku for them, so would reduce the cost of manufacturing by only having the Smart Stick, while increasing coverage on other third-party devices such as Amazon Fire TV and adding the full service to YouView. The arrangement Sky have with BT where BT now have a fully integrated Now TV service with EPG has growth potential. There's also another contract with TalkTalk where they sell discounted passes on their behalf.

Going on the Firestick for example, which is a very popular budget streaming device ensures Now TV is on a popular platform with the potential to raise revenue without having to spend too much money on manufacturing.

Absolutely, the Comcast influence had crossed my mind..

I wonder if the currently manufactured Smart Sticks will be the last produced. Given how far the Roku/own brand device platform is already behind certain models of Smart TV, it might only be a couple of years before support is dropped altogether.

I think each market that has a Sky/Now TV branded SVoD/OTT service in Europe has at least one branded streaming device in addition to support for third-party devices. So I think it's just aligning the UK business with the others.

I must say, the Now TV experience on the Firestick is far more appealing to me than the experience on the black box. Yes it loses a lot of animation and a few curved edges (so the interface looks a bit more boxy), but its far more responsive.

I'm not entirely sure if my Now TV black box can't quite cope with the more modern software/interface that was rolled out recently, as the experience is quite horrible as of late. However as lots of people are peeing and moaning on the Now TV community forums about the black boxes doing (or not doing as the case may be) things it did/didn't do before, makes me wonder whether its going to follow the white box into the pit of obsolete in the near future.

I do find the current interface far chunkier than the old.

The Black Box itself was introduced in 2015, so is already 'old' in technology terms. Considering they managed to get 8 years out of the white box which was ancient, it may have another 2-3 years left in it.

The current interface works ok on my 4K box, but I preferred the skinned Roku interface it had previously.

As for the Firestick app, yes it's very snappy although there are some bugs which pop up occasionally, especially if watching content.