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Anonymous User
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New Apple TV version 4 support

New Apple TV launches October 2015.

Will nowtv app be available on New Apple TV version 4 at launch.
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Anonymous User
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Hi @Anonymous User, @Anonymous User, @Anonymous User, @Anonymous User, @Anonymous User, @Anonymous User, @Anonymous User, @Anonymous User, @Anonymous User, @Anonymous User, @Anonymous User and anyone on this thread I may have unintentionally missed 🙂

 

The NOW TV app for the new Apple TV should be coming out soon, so please keep an eye out.

 

Thanks,

 

Rich

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Anonymous User
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The guy at the 2nd support office was probably making it up to get you off their case. The quote you gave looks very much like pre constructed standard txt, a template.
They probably use the same one for all complaints about lack of updates and just change the name on it.
I've email, got no response. Escalated, got no response. Tweeted, got no response. No I'm going much, much higher, something tells me I'll get a response this time.
Good luck guys. Hope you all hear something soon.
Anonymous User
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It's interesting to see how slowly, one by one, all the old Apple TV 3 apps which were lazily ported to the Apple TV 4 are being replaced by native tvOS apps.  Not everyone creates a masterpiece, but they're all a big improvement over the ugly, bare bones , and slugglish affairs which were ATV 3 apps.

 

Now TV and YouTube are two last high profile apps which have yet to be updated. YouTube is not really a surprise, given the hatred between Apple and Google, but Now TV is something of a mystery. Sky have their crippled Roku boxes to push of course, but they don't handicap their Xbox One or PS4 Now TV apps at all, in fact they just updated the Xbox One app last week. 

 

Why do Sky treat paying Apple TV subscribers so poorly? What have we ever done to warrant such terrible service? We pay the same as everyone else, but get a far worse user experience. The cost of porting the Roku Now TV app to tvOS would be trivial, especially as Sky already have some iOS programmers on staff or at least easily accessable. tvOS apps are famously easy to code, and it's even possible to use one of the script based templates Apple provide to throw together an app in a matter of hours. Such a lazy aproach is a big compromise of course, but the results are still superior to what we're given now.

 

I doubt we'll ever get an answer or the app re-write we need. I just use Now TV on my Xbox One now. It's light years ahead of the Apple TV app in every way, which is ironic given how cumbersome the Xbox One UI is in general.

Anonymous User
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They've made a few tweaks but nothing noticeable. Added All4 to it, but that's only got about 6 shows, what's that all about? Added the other sports passes finally, then added the kids section. It's just been money making changes to boost profits. So disappointed they won't improve the user experience. It's probably due to having to hand a chuck of the subscription to Apple if people subscribe through iTunes. Less profit for them so they do the least development on that platform. In other words, back of the queue for development as we don't give them as much money. Might change given apples relaxation on how big of a slice they take from subscriptions (reduced from 30% to 10%).
If they put a lot of work into the UI they would save money in the end as new pay TV customers would avoid costly Sky and opt for NowTV. No costly set top boxes, no satellite dish, no engineer to fit it, no call outs for hardware faults. It's a win win. Customers will get the same benefits to. Had to take a day off work and wait 2weeks for Sky instillation. Where as with NowTV, download the app, subscribe, 2mins v 2weeks and a days leave. No brainer really, but they don't advertise this or use it to there advantage against BT or Virgin. Buggers belief really.

00010 WELCOME TO THE NOW TV EXPERIENCE ON APPLE TV...[CRLF]

 

Smiley Sad

Anonymous User
Not applicable

@Anonymous User wrote:
They've made a few tweaks but nothing noticeable. Added All4 to it, but that's only got about 6 shows, what's that all about? Added the other sports passes finally, then added the kids section. It's just been money making changes to boost profits. So disappointed they won't improve the user experience. It's probably due to having to hand a chuck of the subscription to Apple if people subscribe through iTunes. Less profit for them so they do the least development on that platform. In other words, back of the queue for development as we don't give them as much money. Might change given apples relaxation on how big of a slice they take from subscriptions (reduced from 30% to 10%).
If they put a lot of work into the UI they would save money in the end as new pay TV customers would avoid costly Sky and opt for NowTV. No costly set top boxes, no satellite dish, no engineer to fit it, no call outs for hardware faults. It's a win win. Customers will get the same benefits to. Had to take a day off work and wait 2weeks for Sky instillation. Where as with NowTV, download the app, subscribe, 2mins v 2weeks and a days leave. No brainer really, but they don't advertise this or use it to there advantage against BT or Virgin. Buggers belief really.

None of those changes require changes to the app, as the app isn't really an app at all in the traditional sense. The old Apple TV 2 and 3 couldn't handle apps as you would find on a PC or phone. Instead, they run scripts hosted on an Apple server somewhere using predefined templates. They can't do much, little more than display text on a black background with some microscopic thumbnails. This is why all Apple TV 2 and 3 apps looked the same.

 

The Apple TV 4 has no such limitations, as it's bascially an iPhone 6 with an HDMI port and no screen. Its apps can be native iOS code with a few minor tweaks for the tvOS platform (which is 99.9% iOS). Apps can be as complex as developers like, so we have the likes of Netflix and MUBI, which are fully native iOS/tvOS code. 

 

Sadly Apple left the old script based "apps" from the Apple TV 3 as an option for the Apple TV 4, which whilst allowing the platform to launch with a passable selection of legacy apps, also meant that the most bone idle of developers need never write a native Apple TV 4 app. 

 

The downsides to these legacy apps are obvious, - they're graphically like something from a 1980s PC, they can't do much beyond playing video and displaying lists of text, and as they're hosted on a server and not on the local hardware they're sluggish and clunky. They also have no access to any of the new features on the ATV 4, such as Siri, top shelf, or visual scrubbing.

 

Sky are lazy and arogant. It's sadly as simple as that.

commanda6
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@Anonymous User wrote:

None of those changes require changes to the app, as the app isn't really an app at all in the traditional sense. The old Apple TV 2 and 3 couldn't handle apps as you would find on a PC or phone. Instead, they run scripts hosted on an Apple server somewhere using predefined templates. They can't do much, little more than display text on a black background with some microscopic thumbnails. This is why all Apple TV 2 and 3 apps looked the same.

 

The Apple TV 4 has no such limitations, as it's bascially an iPhone 6 with an HDMI port and no screen. Its apps can be native iOS code with a few minor tweaks for the tvOS platform (which is 99.9% iOS). Apps can be as complex as developers like, so we have the likes of Netflix and MUBI, which are fully native iOS/tvOS code. 


Hi @Anonymous User

 

That's a nice explanation of the core differences between the Apple TV 3 and Apple TV 4 Smiley Happy


I do not work for Now . I am simply a Now customer trying to help I am a Community Contributor This means that I know a lot about the service. But just like you I am still a customer. This means I cannot help you with issues that would involve looking into your account directly. A member of the now TV forum team or live chat will need to assist you with these issues.
Anonymous User
Not applicable

Funny, I'm sure we've heard that somewhere before.
Why don't you just acknowledge that the ATV4 platform is not a priority and therefore will never be updated?

Oh wait, it's not in the pre-prepared response script.
Disappointing from such a big company.
Anonymous User
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Agree with general opinions on very poor UI on AppleTV (particularly no recently played list...) however my issue relates to playback quality.

Despite all picture processing options on my Pioneer 428XD being set to off, and despite the AppleTV being able to choose resolution/refresh rate automatically for inputting to the TV I find that most of NowTV content sems to cope very poorly with motion to the extent that there is a subtle, but irritating, judder to anything that moves - most noticeable when film sequence pans left or right or when an object moves across the screen. For the worst example of this check out Wheeler Dealers - despite the resolution being good the flicker/judder with motion makes it very tiring on the eyes.

Have picked up on some rumours about 60hz vs 50hz and the suggestions of switching AppleTV output to 50hz but makeslittle/no difference. 

Are NowTV deliberately dropping framerate to save on bandwith?

Suffice to say that if this does not improve my subscription will be very brief.

Anonymous User
Not applicable

The user experience on the Apple TV is pretty poor, trying to watch a series or box set is much harder than it needs to be as there's nothing that shows you what episodes you've previously watched! There's no 'my tv' list either, or any 'continue watching' functionality. Great content ruined by having to fight a half baked app.
Anonymous User
Not applicable

After waiting almost a year since any communication about an NowTV update from Sky, we are still no further on. This is no longer an update you can skimp on. I'm also cancelling my subscription, as there are better apps i.e. Netflix, TV Player, BBC iPlayer on the Apple TV App Store that take full advantage of the system.

An update isn't coming anytime soon.

I'm cancelling NowTV aswell