NOW TV to launch most advanced box yet

[dr_necessitor]

NOW TV to launch most advanced box yet

"Online TV streaming service, NOW TV, is to launch its most advanced TV box later this year. The brand new NOW TV Smart Box will bring together NOW TV’s wide range of pay TV content and over 60 live free-to-air channels.

Additionally customers with a NOW TV Box will see new a brand new interface (UI) roll out to their TVs from February. The new-look UI will include a number of great new features including a content-rich homepage offering editorial recommendations of what to watch across catch up TV apps and pay TV content from NOW TV. A new ‘Best of Catch Up’ section, curated by content partners, will also arrive showcasing all the best shows our customers may have missed in one place.

Gidon Katz, Director of NOW TV said: “The launch of our new homepage on the NOW TV Box will make it easier than ever for our customers to quickly find and watch their favourite shows. And when the new NOW TV Smart Box arrives later this year, it will be the perfect one-stop box to get a contract-free, flexible way of watching the best of pay TV and free-to-air content all in one place.”

NOW TV worked with Silicon Valley based Roku Inc. to develop the new NOW TV Smart Box which will sit alongside the existing NOW TV Box, with pricing details and further information to be made available later in the year."

[Anonymous User]

---

@Anonymous User wrote:

@schnapps this is TV Player as hacked together by me and sideloaded on my box 😉

---

@Anonymous User Hi, this looks great unfortunately i couldn't get it to load past the 'TvPlayer' splash screen.

Not sure if it's cause i'm using the unreleased UI on the new black box and if it only works with the publicly released UI.

If you have any ideas what i could be doing wrong, would be appreciated - cheers

[dr_necessitor]

Yes the TVPlayer app is v. good. Unfortunately the private channel version app installed on ROKU2 seems to be having the same issue today - loads the splash screen then exits back to the Home page. Worked fine on Saturday, but not today. Have updated system software, un-installed/re-installed the app, restarted ROKU2 all to no avail. Wondering if maybe TVPlayer.com is having a problem or has changed something at their end?

[Anonymous User]

@Anonymous User it should work as I've got it running on Roku and NOW TV boxes with OS6 and OS7. If you know how to telnet it's possible you could grab any errors, but as @dr_necessitor mentions it appears to be broken on Roku it's likely something I'm requesting from TVPlayer is causing an error. Will take a look tonight.

[commanda6]

---

@Anonymous User wrote:

@Anonymous User it should work as I've got it running on Roku and NOW TV boxes with OS6 and OS7. If you know how to telnet it's possible you could grab any errors, but as @dr_necessitor mentions it appears to be broken on Roku it's likely something I'm requesting from TVPlayer is causing an error. Will take a look tonight.

---

@Anonymous User I can confirm I can't get the app to run at the moment either it just crashes straight back to the home screen

[Anonymous User]

Thanks for the replies everyone, now at least i know it's not just me who's having issues - cheers

[Anonymous User]

@Anonymous User @dr_necessitor @commanda6 thanks for the reports.

The EPG data that it tries to parse had an issue where one channel was missing the now/next info and caused it to crash on the splash screen. I've added a check to ignore these for now.

I've updated the blog post with the latest ZIP and also pushed the update to the Roku private channels.

[Anonymous User]

Hello @Anonymous User does this feature the plus channels?

[Anonymous User]

@Anonymous User no. The Plus channels have additional DRM and from what I could sniff the format isn't support on Rokus.

[Anonymous User]

@Anonymous UserI don't suppose you would know how to create an unofficial Plex channel which uses the TV Player listings that you have access to.

Then we could sideload Plex and then load the TV Player Channel and have access to both Plex and TV Player, rather than one or the other.

[Anonymous User]

---

@Anonymous User wrote:

@Anonymous UserI don't suppose you would know how to create an unofficial Plex channel which uses the TV Player listings that you have access to.

---

I don't have any always on devices so don't have a plex server installed. My main challenge was building something for Roku as a learning exercise.