smoggy07
Regular Member
- Joined
- Aug 20, 2008
- Messages
- 945
- Reaction score
- 384
- Points
- 63
- Age
- 40
- My Satellite Setup
- Sky minidish and Sky + HD 250gig Anytime+ box with full ish appart from sports and movies, Dreambox DM500s clone (Pli Jade3 max var F/W), Motorised 1.1Meter Dish
- My Location
- middlesbrough, teesside, northeast coast, uk
I'm not really sure what this post is all about yet so for now it's just random musings over what I've seen of the Now TV branded Roku sreaming device (apparently code named a very British sounding "windsor") so far since I got it.
I ordered on Tuesday morning (24/9) and it arrived on Friday afternoon (27/9).
Upon opening the box I found a tiny Now TV device, a remote control, a power supply and a HDMI cable but no mini-jack to RCA cable, a quick chat on live help with a Now TV rep sorted that problem out and I should receive one free in the next 2 weeks (I have no need for it but heck it was free and should have came with the box in place of the HDMI cable lol).
As people have mentioned online, it has a watered down version of the Roku Channel Store which doesn't contain anything that could be seen to compete with the Now TV brand and from reading online there is no way at all to add Netflix to this box because all Roku devices are apparently flashed with a one time programmable Netflix "key" that either allows it to be downloaded and run or doesn't allow it.
There is oddly though an app called USTVNOW which allows you to subscribe to American cable TV, which is cool but must surely compete with Sky.
The way normal Roku work with the Channel Store as far as I can see, if the app you want isn't in the Channel Store on the device, you can add it from the Roku website using an account set up with Roku when activating the device (you activate it by entering a code that is shown on the TV screen when registering with Roku and this links your device to your account).
The Now TV device doesn't display this code so there is no way to link it to a Roku account so you can't add apps/channels through the Roku site but you can side load some apps for now using the developer mode (but only one side loaded app can be installed at any one time) for the time being (before Sky blocks dev mode access).
I've contacted Roku about this code to link up the device with a Roku account and they've came back with this email:
To do anything with the box, you need a Now TV ID or SkyID but when you sign up to Now TV and come to the point where you enter your card/payment details you can open another Now TV page and you should be logged in meaning you can close the payment screen unless you want to sign up to the 30 day free Sky Movies trial.
After signing up, plugging the device in, connecting to the wifi, letting it take an update (which I didn't really want to do - more on this later) and logging in, I added the Plex app using the video MARK posted here, so now I can stream movies and music from my PC to the Now TV box using the Plex app and Plex media server - Happy Days!
Another bonus of Plex is you can add channels to the Plex server (thus sort of getting round the Sky lock down), there are quite a few good apps in the Plex app store and you can even add an unofficial app store + you can link other servers with yours if you have media on several computers to add even more contents.
One of the bad things with Plex is the need to have a PC running as the server but it does work on NAS and other devices and you'll more than likely have a PC running any way.
The Now TV app its self is near enough straight forward, if you sign up to the 30 day free trial (as I was told I had to by SWMBO), they will take card details but won't charge you and you can start viewing right away.
One cool feature is when you go to view the live movie channels, after you select the channel you want it gives you the option to either watch it live or start it from the beginning using their movie library, so if you spot a movie you want to watch but it's nearly over, you can start it again.
So far as long as Sky don't block the developers access and stop Plex, these are a bargain @ £9.99 and I'm ordering 2 more for the bedrooms.
To play it safe, I'm reading up on how to block the Roku/Now TV update servers ip addresses so that they can't force an update on the device to block dev access because if they do block it, and you don't want to sub to their offerings then the box is next to useless.
I'm not sure what else to add at the moment but I will update this thread when I've read a bit more about this device and had a better play with it.
I ordered on Tuesday morning (24/9) and it arrived on Friday afternoon (27/9).
Upon opening the box I found a tiny Now TV device, a remote control, a power supply and a HDMI cable but no mini-jack to RCA cable, a quick chat on live help with a Now TV rep sorted that problem out and I should receive one free in the next 2 weeks (I have no need for it but heck it was free and should have came with the box in place of the HDMI cable lol).
As people have mentioned online, it has a watered down version of the Roku Channel Store which doesn't contain anything that could be seen to compete with the Now TV brand and from reading online there is no way at all to add Netflix to this box because all Roku devices are apparently flashed with a one time programmable Netflix "key" that either allows it to be downloaded and run or doesn't allow it.
There is oddly though an app called USTVNOW which allows you to subscribe to American cable TV, which is cool but must surely compete with Sky.
The way normal Roku work with the Channel Store as far as I can see, if the app you want isn't in the Channel Store on the device, you can add it from the Roku website using an account set up with Roku when activating the device (you activate it by entering a code that is shown on the TV screen when registering with Roku and this links your device to your account).
The Now TV device doesn't display this code so there is no way to link it to a Roku account so you can't add apps/channels through the Roku site but you can side load some apps for now using the developer mode (but only one side loaded app can be installed at any one time) for the time being (before Sky blocks dev mode access).
I've contacted Roku about this code to link up the device with a Roku account and they've came back with this email:
The NOW TV box is designed specifically for NOW TV subscribers. In order to activate the player, you will just need to input your NOW TV account credentials upon initial setup. The Roku account on one hand, is only used to activate regular Roku players. In spite of this, you can still have access to the Channel Store even if this player is not linked to a Roku account. To set your expectation though, the channel selections on the NOW TV player may be smaller in number.
To do anything with the box, you need a Now TV ID or SkyID but when you sign up to Now TV and come to the point where you enter your card/payment details you can open another Now TV page and you should be logged in meaning you can close the payment screen unless you want to sign up to the 30 day free Sky Movies trial.
After signing up, plugging the device in, connecting to the wifi, letting it take an update (which I didn't really want to do - more on this later) and logging in, I added the Plex app using the video MARK posted here, so now I can stream movies and music from my PC to the Now TV box using the Plex app and Plex media server - Happy Days!
Another bonus of Plex is you can add channels to the Plex server (thus sort of getting round the Sky lock down), there are quite a few good apps in the Plex app store and you can even add an unofficial app store + you can link other servers with yours if you have media on several computers to add even more contents.
One of the bad things with Plex is the need to have a PC running as the server but it does work on NAS and other devices and you'll more than likely have a PC running any way.
The Now TV app its self is near enough straight forward, if you sign up to the 30 day free trial (as I was told I had to by SWMBO), they will take card details but won't charge you and you can start viewing right away.
One cool feature is when you go to view the live movie channels, after you select the channel you want it gives you the option to either watch it live or start it from the beginning using their movie library, so if you spot a movie you want to watch but it's nearly over, you can start it again.
So far as long as Sky don't block the developers access and stop Plex, these are a bargain @ £9.99 and I'm ordering 2 more for the bedrooms.
To play it safe, I'm reading up on how to block the Roku/Now TV update servers ip addresses so that they can't force an update on the device to block dev access because if they do block it, and you don't want to sub to their offerings then the box is next to useless.
I'm not sure what else to add at the moment but I will update this thread when I've read a bit more about this device and had a better play with it.