Is a NOW TV box actually any good?

Simian

Simian

Simian

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I know it's only a £10enner... but I'm at a loose end with the BBC and Sony!

I tried to watch 'The Bakeoff' on iPlayer last night with the Wife, on our 3 year old Sony Bravia KDL-40CX523 TV only to be greeted with a new and very slow loading interface on the iPlayer software which then bugged out and froze! I then tried the same with out Sony BDP-S380 Blu-Ray player, this time to be greeted with a message telling us that the Hardware isn't compatible with the Software! :mad:

Both have been regularly updated, and both have played iPlayer perfectly in HD for the last 3 years!!

Is it Sony or the BBC to blame??!??

Anyhew, I've been thinking about getting a NOW TV box to take up the slack, and also allow us to catchup with ITV and Ch4 (the TV still does Demandfive no problems)

So I thought (before laying down £10squid) I'd ask you guys,
a) if any of you have a NOW TV Box?
b) What are they like?
c) is it true you don't need any sort of Subscription to use it (I'd only need it for Catch-up TV, not Movies/Sport etc..)??
d) Is it really that easy to install PLEX on it? or even Mediabrowser then stream from my network to it!?!

Are there any other catch-up TV boxes out there?? Not too 'spensive!!

I don't want an XStation or PlayBox as I'm not a gamer and already have a Blu-Ray player!

Cheers, Sim :)
 
a) if any of you have a NOW TV Box?

Yep, have two. They are not really a tenner though. Basically when you buy one, you buy a pack (Sports, Entertainment, Movies) which contains a voucher code in the box for x number of months worth of viewing. Basically the box itself is free. Remember though, if you are a new subscriber you get the first month free.

b) What are they like?

I really like them, and personally think the Now TV interface to be better than the Xbox One app. It's only 720p and wifi (no ethernet) but I've never thought the picture to be bad.

c) is it true you don't need any sort of Subscription to use it (I'd only need it for Catch-up TV, not Movies/Sport etc..)??

You need a Now TV account to get the box setup, but you don't have to pay a monthly fee if you don't want

d) Is it really that easy to install PLEX on it? or even Mediabrowser then stream from my network to it!?!

VERY easy. You enter a series of key presses on the remote to enable the development mode feature. This also tells you the boxes IP and sets up a password. You download the .zip for plex (or get rarflix which is better), go to the IP address on your pc (login with rokudev / password) and upload the zip file.

You then have to visit the plex site (or roku cant remember) to link your plex account to the box. That's it really, takes about 5 minutes.

Whilst I'm talking about Now TV boxes, you will see a lot of sellers on ebay offering Now TV boxes for £200 loaded with 12 months worth of sky channels. These are all scams!!!!!! Whilst you can watch all sky channels on the Now TV box, It's not technically possible to do what they are saying.
 
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Simian said:
Both have been regularly updated, and both have played iPlayer perfectly in HD for the last 3 years!!

Is it Sony or the BBC to blame??!??
Click to expand...

Sony is to blame. Makes sense that the BBC would update iPlayer over time, but those updates need to be implemented on the devices that use the service.

I suppose Sony is no different to any other electronics company that makes devices that use iPlayer. When the hardware is a certain number of years old, they just stop the updates. It sucks, but it's not surprising.

I have a Sony S370 BD player, which as you might guess, also displays the same message. Before an update to iPlayer making it incompatible with the version my BD player was using, the service was really hit and miss. Some things would play fine, but quite a few buffered and stopped way too much. When it did that I did wonder if it was iPlayer itself, but switching on the PC, the programmes played fine.

Probably quite a common problem for devices where the manufacturer abandons updates on older devices. I'm sure they would just prefer to sell us brand new boxes instead. ;)
 
I do not have an aerial upstairs but I do have wired network. Does the NowTV box have any freeview channels or are they all via the subscription? I used to use TV Catchup on XBMC but it constantly caused lockups and other problems. I would just like a little box that I could plug in a network cable and stream normal tv as a source.
 
NowTV doesnt do normal TV channels no, it only has the regular on demand stuff without subscription (ITV Player, 4od, iPlayer, Demand5).

I have 3 of them around my house so far, and will probably end up getting a couple more, they stream via plex brilliantly, and the on demand stuff works fine.

The only thing which hasnt been mentioned is that if your connection is slow, the on demand interfaces tend to lag. I have tried mine on a faster connection than mine and it resolves it, but if you have <6mbit ADSL like me then you may find them slightly annoying for the internet based on demand stuff.
 
The wifi is pretty horrible on them. For plex, there is a bandwidth monitor in the settings and it says I get about 1-3Mbps with the box directly beside the router.

It's a known problem, so just something to think about.
 
Ive not had any wifi problems with mine, and i live in a fairly large old house. As i say i have 3 of them around the house, they all work excellently with plex.
 
They're excellent. We got rid of Sky after moving so we no longer could get demand as we're yet to buy freeview box. I have had a NowTV box since demand so grabbed it it's now sat downstairs by the TV, I can stream American programs to the TV, YouTube videos etc. it's used more than the actual TV now.
 
Sorry to hijack the thread but a friend has a my cloud 3tb drive and want's to stream his stuff from this to his nowtv box the drive wont allow for plex * western digital * will mediabrowser work
 
There is a mediabrowser roku app, and google reveals instructions for installing it on nowtv, so i would guess that it will work
 
I use mine in my lounge everyday and it's great!

I guess it's not great for people who are blinded by the lack of 1080p but actually it's a great little box for hardly any cash!
 
valve90210 said:
I use mine in my lounge everyday and it's great!

I guess it's not great for people who are blinded by the lack of 1080p but actually it's a great little box for hardly any cash!
Click to expand...

It's more due to it being too slow as well as having crappy Wifi which reduced the quality you can use even more than it just being 720p. Couldn't use it every day!!
 
dbmzk1 said:
It's more due to it being too slow as well as having crappy Wifi which reduced the quality you can use even more than it just being 720p. Couldn't use it every day!!
Click to expand...

The wifi seems absolutely fine to me, the lag in the on demand sections appears to me to be mainly down to my slow ADSL. It seems much snappier on a faster connection.

That said i only use it for plex as i have sky HD with the on demand stuff, its a fantastic little thing for the purpose of plex.
 
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