Sorry, Now TV is currently unavailable

[Anonymous User]

Hi, it’s saying on my tv screen “ Sorry, Now TV is currently unavailable, please try again later” it’s been like this for a couple of days, tried unplugging both tv and stick but still nothing, I can get it on my iPad, can anyone help please ?

[Anonymous User]

Thanks, I'll have another look at it, currently using the xbox to watch it.
I emailed them too but again, not much use.

[Tigerlily1]

Was sent a free stick to replace my soon to be out of date box.Great I thought , set it all up and was fine for two days.Now getting the Sorry Now TV is unavailable message every time I try to use.Have done the press reset on the stick and eventually it comes back up.The really infuriating thing is it keeps disconnecting me from all my apps such as BBC I Player and ITV Hub etc so I have to keep going through the whole process of signing in again and entering the activation code.Not happy at all.Have cancelled my Amazon Prime to replace it with the Now TV stick but if if carries on like this may just resubscribe as never had any problems with their stuck which has always worked perfectly.

[Anonymous User]

I’ve had this problem and realised it was down to me using the PiHole ad-blocker. If you use PiHole,  you need to whitelist pubads.g.doubleclick.net

I hope someone finds this useful.

Paul.

[smithbill17]

@Anonymous User  You're a genius sir! I too use Pi-hole on my LAN to block ads and for weeks I've been getting the "NowTV currently unavailable" issue. Their technical support people are idiots.

I whitelisted  pubads.g.doubleclick.net  in Pi-hole and although it didn't seem to work at first, after a couple of reboots everything seems good.

It *really* annoys me that NowTV require end users to allow advertisements or the device simply doesn't work properly! Especially given that the NowTV stick costs £25 and most of the content is paid for too.

UPDATE: actually, after another reboot, it stopped working again.  It looks like you have to whitelist  dpm.demdex.net

[Anonymous User]

I was directed here by @schnapps from a different thread

I can't see why I must disable my Pi-Hole or whitelist some DNS servers to get this app to work on my Roku (Streambar).

1. I don't get the option to opt-out of tracking, regardless if it's for "legitimate purposes" or to "improve the app" (this is a potential GDPR [UK] compliance issue).
   I don't even know what kind of information they are collecting, it is personally identifiable (IP, MAC, Location, etc), need some transparency?
2. Why do I need to get served advertising in the first place, I am paying for the Now (TV) service.

If I don't get an option to opt-out I will just cancel my services with Now, this is unreasonable.

[ABCD]

Omg bro this was it. Randomly selected some ad blocker setting in my Asus router app the other day... Did not join the dots together.

As soon as I read this comment the penny dropped. Fixed. Cheers 

[Anonymous User]

Yep - my Amazon Fire Stick works perfectly too. Trouble is, I can't watch F1 Grand Prix on the Fire Stick - so I am stuck with the wretched NOW TV stick problems.

Did you hear me cursing when I was unable to start the NOW TV system when I switched it on a few mins before the start of one of the recent races?  I don't subscribe to Sky Sports to spend my time getting stressed and trying to get a faulty product to work. I subscribe to watch races and chill out doing that.  I wonder if Trading Standards would be interested to learn that Sky is still selling broken systems ?

Fortunately, I think that NOW TV is still working properly on my mobile phone - but I really don't want to watch motor racing on a six inch screen, when I have NOW TV sticks plugged into large TVs in the lounge and bedroom. #

Sky - are you listening to us all ?

[Anonymous User]

I had this issue...tried software update, factory reset, numerous live chats etc and nothing worked. Eventually worked it out by trial and error. My BT parental controls were blocking the NOW TV app. In my case it was the ‘file sharing’ box I needed to uncheck...i.e unblock for it to work.

Now given this seems to be a common issue, and BT are a widely used ISP you would have thought NOW TV would have identified this as a potential issue following a firmware update...still, hope that helps some of you!

[Anonymous User]

Yes, worked for me, thank you @Anonymous User  

[Anonymous User]

You’re welcome...glad it worked

[Anonymous User]

Hi 

i haven’t used Now TV for over a month or so, had the same message as above, 

I pressed the Sky Store button on my remote bottom RHS and scrolled through ....then returned to Now TV using the home button Top RHS 

All working fine again .... 

Cheers 

[Anonymous User]

Issue was resolved for me by change to BT Web Project, allowing File Sharing access. Goodness knows what NowTV have done to require this change, which reduces protection for users.

All other solutions didn't work for me.

[Anonymous User]

Simple just press the reset on you box.

[Daniel1967]

On the fire stick go to settings> applications> manage installed apps> click NowTV and uninstall. 
Search for NowTV and reinstall and sign in 👍🏼

[Anonymous User]

I don’t understand this either, however you can disable pi.hole for 10seconds while the app loads and everything then works fine.

It must be checking the status of the ad server when it loads. If it’s unable to it just gives up and thinks the nowtv server is down.

Oddly this doesn’t seem to be a problem on my iPhone, just my Apple TV.

[gavs82008]

@Anonymous User 

Try performing a full factory reset to the NOW stick. That seems to resolve most issues.

https://help.nowtv.com/article/hard-factory-reset-now-box-stick

[smithbill17]

I used to use PiHole on my local network to block adverts, but I have now switched to using NextDNS. However, I've found that if you don't add the following two domains to your NextDNS AllowList, then NowTV won't function & you get the "currently unavailable" message all the time.

Add these to your NextDNS AllowList:

scribe.logs.roku.com

dpm.demdex.net

[RoyB]

@smithbill17 

https://community.roku.com/t5/Discussions/Roku-TCL-TV-making-too-many-calls-to-scribe-logs-roku-com/...

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/audience-manager/user-guide/reference/demdex-calls.html?lang...

(and scroll down)

[smithbill17]

Interesting information - thank you for the links.

It seems there is no solution to the vast number of DNS lookups from NowTV/Roku sticks. Some people seem to be saying that whitelisting the two domains (as I have) significantly reduces the number of lookups. Others saying that it's best to block these domains to stop Roku 'snooping' unnecessarily on people's viewing habits.

I think for me personally, as I rarely use the NowTV stick, the best solution is simply to switch it off.

Interestingly though, in my NextDNS logs, I'm only seeing the above domain lookups about once every 15mins or so. I'm not sure if this is because NowTV/Roku have actually fixed the problem with all these DNS lookups, or if it's because NextDNS is not actually logging or displaying the same level of detail that PiHole does (if the latter, then perhaps I should ditch NextDNS and return to PiHole).

[RoyB]

@smithbill17 

If you were making a phone call and got through first time, how many times would you redial? 😛

Now won’t work if it can’t get through to demdex, and just stops.

But the Roku checks are programmed to rake place infrequently if they can get through; whereas if they can’t, they retry and retry at a furious pace. Something that’s designed to minimise the delay if there’s a temporary glitch, but no-one at Roku seems to have heard about backing off the frequency of attempts that keep failing - an omission that is a very amateur coding mistake, that should be caught by any decent code review and corrected.

Just whitelist them so they go through, and the blizzard ceases, though. And what, exactly, are Roku going to learn from these messages that you don’t want them to know?