Anyone have recent experience of using this service ?

 

What's the data usuage, loss-of-service, charges ?

 

Being a confirmed terestial Freeview type, I'm thinking of using it to get access to premium pay-to-view  sports events e.g. Test matches .

 

My understanding is that its currently offered as  a streaming broadband service, via a one-off payment (£17) for a set-top box, plus the purchase of PTV tickets on an "As required" basis - obviously I would be looking at the £10 for a week ticket.

 

The box and tickets seem to be available through the South American Company.

 

Seems a much better deal for me than investing in a year long subscription to SKY or BT.

 

Cheers

 

 

Nick

Edited 24 July, 20169 yr by Clunkclick

If you're going to use it mostly for sports, it's not great value for money. The movie and entertainment passes are excellent though, especially if you pick them up nice and cheap when the box & voucher combos are on offer - check Hot Uk Deals. I think I got a black (1080p) box and three months movies for about £18 last time. There's always loads of vouchers on eBay too. We tend to buy two or three months movies a couple of times a year then let it lapse for a while when there's nothing new on.

I've got several white (720p) boxes floating around somewhere, plus the black one as I swapped to using an Apple TV instead.

you're with BT IIRC (I do RC as I've seen your posts) so why not a BT vision package? Youview box is very good and they do Sky Sports packages for not a lot.

you're with BT IIRC (I do RC as I've seen your posts) so why not a BT vision package? Youview box is very good and they do Sky Sports packages for not a lot.

£49 connection fee (For cabinet work in the road ?) for BT sport, plus its not clear whether all the Cricket is covered.

 

Commercialisation of sport what a ****ing pain-in-the-arse - far easier in the 70's when you could sit down to a full 5 days of uninterrupted viewing, sans noncy advertising.

 

Nick

£49 connection fee (For cabinet work in the road ?) for BT sport, plus its not clear whether all the Cricket is covered.

 

Commercialisation of sport what a kitten pain-in-the-arse - far easier in the 70's when you could sit down to a full 5 days of uninterrupted viewing, sans noncy advertising.

 

Nick

no cab work in the road req'd if you're on Infinity. That's for somebody in an office somewhere to click on a few icons on their BT Webtop laptop lol

 

Agreed re commercialisation of sport though. Premierships owned by Murdoch basically. I refuse to give that man the wipings off my Kleenex Quilted. Now TV is also a Sky owned deal.

If you're going to use it mostly for sports, it's not great value for money. The movie and entertainment passes are excellent though, especially if you pick them up nice and cheap when the box & voucher combos are on offer - check Hot Uk Deals. I think I got a black (1080p) box and three months movies for about £18 last time. There's always loads of vouchers on eBay too. We tend to buy two or three months movies a couple of times a year then let it lapse for a while when there's nothing new on.

I've got several white (720p) boxes floating around somewhere, plus the black one as I swapped to using an Apple TV instead.

Cheers. 5 x £10 is better than 1 x £480. It was the Cricket that I was interested in - TMS on BBC 5 Sports extra, good as it is,  is a bit limiting.

 

There's something TM can put on her list to "Help those that have been left-behind"- one test match series a year for terrestrial freeview, FOC, by law. But I won't hold my breath, stands about as much chance as the Ice caps being in solid form in 50 years time or a fully re-furbished E-Type arriving outside the front door.

 

Nick

no cab work in the road req'd if you're on Infinity. That's for somebody in an office somewhere to click on a few icons on their BT Webtop laptop lol

 

Agreed re commercialisation of sport though. Premierships owned by Murdoch basically. I refuse to give that man the wipings off my Kleenex Quilted. Now TV is also a Sky owned deal.

You sure about the no cab work. I may have misread it, but I just checked the BT " Existing customer" site and it offered three incarnations one free use (But with a 49 connection fee in the small print.) and the two PFV services at different rates ?

 

Would they be streaming TV down the same fibre as Broadband bearing in mind you can get each service individually - too great a risk of local hacking (They don't require much encouragement round here) and slowing down the BB.

 

Nick

Edited 24 July, 20169 yr by Clunkclick

You sure about the no cab work. I may have misread it, but I just checked the BT " Existing customer" site and it offered three incarnations one free use (But with a 49 connection fee in the small print.) and the two PFV services at different rates ?

 

Would they be streaming TV down the same fibre as Broadband bearing in mind you can get each service individually - too great a risk of local hacking (They don't require much encouragement round here).

 

Nick

there's only four fibre optic lines going into a DSLAM so yes. Down the same line. Are you Fibre To The Cab (FTTC) or Fibre To The Premises (FTTP). My guess is you're FTTC then jumpered to the copper cab.

 

Edit. Not sure what you mean by PFV

there's only four fibre optic lines going into a DSLAM so yes. Down the same line. Are you Fibre To The Cab (FTTC) or Fibre To The Premises (FTTP). My guess is you're FTTC then jumpered to the copper cab.

 

Edit. Not sure what you mean by PFV

Generalist term (Pay-for-view)- for use by one (Me) who is not aware of the specifics

I've just had a look at BT's Customer pricing booklet ( You need a qualification from Bletchley Park to decode it - as clear as the bubbling mud that is DAB reception).It would seem that there are two set-top boxes available a "Vision" box and a "You TV", both of which may require an engineer visit to install (@£49) and for which various zero charge services are available "Starter" and "Essential" (Both of which have to be activated (The office job you referred to) @ £49 a pop).But none of these services runs Sky Sports. SS is only available at a monthly charge between £18-22 depending on how many of the three SS channels offered (1, 2 & 5) you decide to take).

Reading this document would have been a breeze for Mr Turin, I am sure !

Nick

After a further ferret around the websites, It appears  that BT Vision (Which took input from the terrestrial aerial and from the broadband line) is no more and that BT's current offering is You TV only (Broadband only).

 

Further, the cricket presentation on the dedicated sports channels, BT Sports 1, 2 & 3(?) is limited to the Caribean premier league (This is now available for free on Freeview !). However, BT will be offering the next year's Australian Ashes matches.

 

Sir Michael Rake, Chairman of BT, was on BBC R4 today, to re-assure us all that BT have been making mammoth investments in infrastructure and large steps in improving customer service over the last few years, however, you've only got to visit the BT Community's BT TV forums and read the comments on there to know that there's a lot of dissatisfied customers out there with the most basic of compliants which go unresolved - principal amongst which was conflicting information on different bits of the BT TV website about installation, services actually provided and charges and the pressurised customer service assisants who pop-up "For a Chat" before the customer can start to read the info on the web page.

 

Clearly, a great improvement compared with the 1970s, when, once you paid your licence fee and set rental, you could simply sit down, without interruption by advertisements or loss of signal,  and watch a days worth of sporting event on the TV.

 

Onward and upward.

 

 

Nick

Edited 25 July, 20169 yr by Clunkclick

I've a couple of boxes (bought for £9.99 (old) and £13.99 (new) both came with some free stuff the same as Zoidburg)  - mostly use them for the catch up services but have watched the odd GP (£6.99 24lr ticket) on it as well.  The new (black ) box is very good and streams well. (C5 catchup is actually better quality than C5 Freeview!)

 

 Not sure of the data usage but as it does stream 1080 (new box) I'd expect it be quite  high. Old box (white) was only 720.  I think you can limit the quality in the settings though. 

This one ? ;-

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/NOW-TV-Month-Sports-Pass/dp/B019DM86YM/ref=sr_1_8?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1469464287&sr=1-8&keywords=now+tv+box

 

Reports look good.

 

Rental period run from first use  or purchase ?

 

My recent experience was that watching HD live streaming of the Farnborough Airshow and RIAT this year consumed about 1 Gb an hour. So, a 5 day Test match @ 7 hours a day could effectively wipe out my monthly data allowance (45Gbs) with BT Infinity.

 

Presumably, turning down the screen resolution at my end won't effect the amount of data transmitted ?

 

 

 

Nick

 

 

Reports look good.

Rental period run from first use or purchase ?

My recent experience was that watching HD live streaming of the Farnborough Airshow and RIAT this year consumed about 1 Gb an hour. So, a 5 day Test match @ 7 hours a day could effectively wipe out my monthly data allowance (45Gbs) with BT Infinity.

Presumably, turning down the screen resolution at my end won't effect the amount of data transmitted ?

Nick

They usually come with a voucher to activate the free access. You don' t have activate it immmediately. Looks a bit pricey though, some of the big suoermarkets had them on offer a little while ago. I'd would have thought that turning down the resolution on the box should reduce the amount of data used. I'll have a look on my boxes to see if that option exist.

Edited 25 July, 20169 yr by io1901

You can set the new box to be HD720 and HD1080.The old one was SD and HD720. (Even had a setting for4:3 tv!)

If it's anything like sky compression, an hour programme will be between 400 & 700mb depending on the channel.

Sky are currently developing NowTV packages including broadband and telephone as a way to retain those leaving Sky.

This one ? ;-

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/NOW-TV-Month-Sports-Pass/dp/B019DM86YM/ref=sr_1_8?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1469464287&sr=1-8&keywords=now+tv+box

 

Reports look good.

 

Rental period run from first use  or purchase ?

 

My recent experience was that watching HD live streaming of the Farnborough Airshow and RIAT this year consumed about 1 Gb an hour. So, a 5 day Test match @ 7 hours a day could effectively wipe out my monthly data allowance (45Gbs) with BT Infinity.

 

Presumably, turning down the screen resolution at my end won't effect the amount of data transmitted ?

 

 

 

Nick

 

I have a couple of these (got them on offer at £13 last Nov with the 2 months movies thing). I registered a new account used my voucher got me 2 free months and let it charge me £9.99 for the next one after that then hit the cancel subscription option on their site and being Sky they instantly offered me 3 months at £3.99 to stay with no commitment can still leave at any time, so I took that out and then used my voucher at end of period. You can use up to 4 devices on the one NOW TV account I think. So for me both boxes in the house, my PS4 and smartphone all have NOW TV. I just got the boxes initially to be able to use the likes of BBC iplayer and youtube on a spare TV in my den, but the movies etc were quite good with regular changes and premiers. Amazon fire stick is a much superior device, but for the price these are, they do all I actually want. 

Edited 25 July, 20169 yr by FUBAR

£49 connection fee (For cabinet work in the road ?) for BT sport, plus its not clear whether all the Cricket is covered.

 

Is cricket ,SPORT ??? OR TORTURE?

Edited 25 July, 20169 yr by VWD

FYI Nick, There's a built in NowTV app on the BT Youview box.