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Anonymous User
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Sky Sports Unwatchable

We have had Now TV for years and we pay for all of the available content. A few weeks ago we noticed the streaming quality of live channels drop to an unwatchable level after 5-10 minutes of viewing. It's only paid for Now TV content, Sky News and Freeview channels like BBC iPlayer etc work perfectly. It's not buffering, instead it sort of 'downgrades' to an incredibly poor viewing quality that doesn't attempt to improve. The only way to solve this temporarily is Settings > System > Advanced System Settings > Network Connection Reset. This helps by restarting everything and normal viewing can then last for another 5-10 minutes. Watching any kind of sport, especially F1, is extremely frustrating as it takes 5 minutes to restart the equipment in this way. Our fibre broadband is superb, we have two separate connections with different ISPs, several routers to boost the wifi connection around the house, and we run a telecoms business from home; no WiFi issues here whatsoever. Being advised to carry out a speed test is infuriating. I can replicate the issue regardless of the broadband connection or location of 4 devices, in fact the 4th device is 9 miles away using and ethernet cable with the exact same problem! Now TV blaming users' broadband connection is utter nonsense and it is 100% due to a recent update. The problem appeared a few weeks ago. Can someone please let me know if they have been assured a fix is on the way or if there is anything we can do to improve things ourselves? I have reduced down to 720p resolution and it does not help. There are no issues with any catch up content. We also have 3 Amazon Firesticks with no such issues. 

6 REPLIES 6
Anonymous User
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I have the same problem on entertainment, movies and sports. 

Spent hours on the online chat with no help. I keep asking if nowtv are aware of this issue and they just say my stick is faulty even though it happened on the nowtv box so bought a stick. 

Anonymous User
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Yes, live sport, as well as live movies and live entertainment is a problem for us. It’s not a ‘faulty’ stick at all, did they offer to replace it? We have two sticks and two black boxes, which are all experiencing the same problem over the last few weeks.
Anonymous User
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We have trouble with the sports channels- totally unwatchable!  Just renewed subscription and account watch any sports.  Very unclear picture - tried resetting router, using Ethernet cable and changing router settings so it has to be a Sky/ Now tv issue .... when will it get fixed?

Anonymous User
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Noticed my sky sports news on my stick is unwatchable 

Anonymous User
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I had exactly the same experience and agree with your theory this was caused by an update because everything worked correctly for a few weeks when I first installed the stick.

About a week ago, following one of many factory resets, the software updated to version 8.1.3.4170 and this seemed to fix most of the issue, at least for me.   The picture still occasionally goes blurry but not as much as before and now it can recover.  I've not had to restart the stick for a whole week!  If you don't have this version of software or later, it might be worth trying a factory reset again?  Good Luck

Anonymous User
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Yes it’s working ok now and we got a £20 refund from Live Chat 👍