Apple TV 4K Now app won’t let me log in

[NeilG]

I have seen similar posts on this issue. But none mentions the fact that while it worked fine for a long while the Now app on our brand new Apple TV 4K refuses to let us log in. Now the same happens when I try to do so from the smart lg tv or even our iPhones. The common denominator is the broadband connection we have. Our smart tv is connected via Ethernet, the iPhones via WiFi and the Apple TV I have tried both with WiFi and Ethernet. Each time the Now app is failing to allow to sign in. Tether the applet tv to our 5G Three or GiffGaff internet connections by selecting the iPhones hotspots for Apple TV and/or the smart lg tv to online and the app works fine. The inability to log in while one our own home broadband extends to the NOWtv.com website as well! I have no funny restrictions on our router, we have 1Gbit connection with optical door to door thanks to the awesome Community Fiber that allows same upload as download speeds, no antivirus or anything to block ads and yet… after having spent hours trying to figure this out, something I used to do a lot when we had virgin media, which line Sky is something we would never consider again, we had to cancel all subscriptions. The basic subscription is however going to continue getting paid until the start of April, never mind that if we wish to use it we got to go through a seriously annoying process of altering the streaming device connections. And as far as the three mobile internet is concerned it’s ok, for its unlimited, but the giffgaff one is not. These could well have not even existed so it’s besides the point, and infuriating to boot to think that and although it seemed to be fine, a recent Now app update seems to have turned sour to our broadband connection, which kind of makes one think about what the update has included as snooping standard that our router won’t allow for. Unless it is the case of Sky and Now trying to block competitors and force folks going into broadbanding with them. Which quite frankly I fail to see how it’s gonna happen. So we are now forced to simply suck up the loss of the rest of our subscription, and even forget getting any of the Now content. We had decided to upgrade even and get extra packages, but now the family consensus is ef that! We lost two months, but Now is losing out more. Plus, we will notify our friends and family of our situation so that they may not fall for this too. Oh and before you say anything, when I said I spent hours that time includes that spent resetting to factory settings the Apple TV and even restoring the router. It irks me no end when others seem to think they (or not think) can take away from one that which they cannot give. Time! 

[RoyB · Accepted solution]

@NeilG 

Besides Now, the other common factor is Community Fibre, which it doesn't work over, while on the several cellular providers, it does work.

Have you asked Community Fibre what they think?

You don’t specify the exact error that you are getting, but one possible scenario here is that Community Fibre have given you an IP address that Now thinks is outside the UK.

This could well be Now’s error, not Community Fibre’s, but it may be a much quicker solution if Community Fibre can give you a new IP address, rather than struggling to get Now to accept that the one you have now is actually in the UK.

[NeilG]

@RoyB Hey, nice one but already been there. I do use VPN tunnels and generally a part of the home network does go online on VPN. Alas, not the case here. Besides, we don’t have a static IP address, which is often a pain with VPN provided up addresses! All those captcha and all. So, yes, I am considering a static ip address with CF plus pay for a dedicated one on the VPN provider side. But nah. Not the problem causing this issue here. CF hardly go as far as manage the network like that. They’ll get there as the take over more customers, but for now it’s not the case. Also, it is quite a coincidence this started after we updated the Now App. Also, as I said it is not affecting only the app, but using chrome or safari to go to the nowtv website from my phone, iPad and even a MacBook and a Linux machine sees the same issue. Refusal to progress and a long winded message about not being able to sign in to the specific server. If it was indeed an IP issue then the difficulty may have been in being able to watch content seeing how as you suggest the all may think I was doing so from abroad. It would not restrict access to the website even, which granted does include access to the app content. So when I load up the app on Apple TV it tells me it cannot sign me in just try later. 3 days later? Four? How long. Also, a non static IP would surely mean -never mind I have several times manually refreshed the IP adress, but a complete router reset and whole network cold reboot would get us a new IP address. One thing I am suspecting may be the issue but then again I have stopped the feature and have not activated it lost reset is this new Linksys thing re “safe browsing”! Then you have all the madness with the “ask app not to track” and the Apple private relay business may be conflicting with it all. If so why do none of the others have a problem? Amazon Prime, Disney, Netflix,

paramount plus, Apple TV plus, freevee, player, the c4, itvx and lions gate, my5 and play, mubi, couriers and ted, udemy and YouTube apps are working fine? 
Of course correlation is not causation but the way I see it the problem probably lies with someone at Now having forgotten to tick a server box or something. 
meaning we are faced with this error message when trying to access nowtv.com on any browser and/or machine whilst trying so through C.F. 
mentioning it here but it’s also posted on several sites on several occasions through several years and it’s reported by users trying with edge and other streaming services even. Oh well. There is worse things to worry about anyway. And I have given this way too much thought. So, Now, so long, adieu,  aufviedersen goodbye… 

Access Denied

You don't have permission to access "http://desktop.client.ott.sky.com/nowtv/8.10.0/production/webapp/latest/index.html" on this server.

Reference #18.4a847b5c.1704635715.a7b06508

[Wevs]

@NeilG Don’t know if it’s helpful but I had a similar problem in that I couldn’t sign in to Now on any device at home. It turned out that CF had somehow set my IP to a greek address. I can’t remember if I just reset the router or called them but anyway it was solved.

[Wevs]

@NeilG Sorry, it looks like I should have posted this further down the thread.

[RoyB]

@Wevs 

When you post a reply, your reply appears just below the post you are replying to. When you refresh the thread, it does then appear in chronological order; so if you are looking at this, you will see that your post above now appears at the end of the thread, as you intended.

Now are aware of this quirk in the Community software, know what the fix is, and may well apply it at a suitable moment in the future.

[jon12345895]

@RoyB 

@NeilG ignore the above, it's not Community Fibre's issue. Check your IP with geolocation services, CF is a new service and that means they have IPs that were most likely recently owned by somebody else. Whatever geolocation provider NowTV uses has a local "backup or copy" of the geolocation database, so that they can query locally to see if they should serve an IP without the latency of relying on a third party API service. It's 100% a NowTV issue either way, because otherwise you would have issues using any other UK-only based service, online banking, among other things.

Lookup your IP on Maxmind, it's the most common cause of this issue, if it's showing as UK based with CF then it's a NowTV issue

[RoyB]

@jon12345895 

A good plan  - Maxmind has a digit wrong in my postcode, but it does say it could be 5km either way.

However, are we sure that the error messages encountered are from Now not CF, and that they relate to geolocation?

[RoyB]

@NeilG 

If somebody at Now had forgotten to tick something, then I can’t see how you wouldn’t get bounced when you go in over Giffgaff, etc.

Your common factor remains Community Fibre, and if it were me, I would be laying this at their door and asking them to fix it, or to demonstrate it isn’t them.

Maybe the IP geolocation hypothesis won’t fly, but I’m sure it’s something like that; maybe Now think when you come in via CF that you are coming over a VPN (and given what you say above, are you sure that isn’t really the case?)

Do CF have a Community where you can ask if anybody else has issues with Now?

We do know that Now are exceptionally picky about a range of things, and this can explain why it’s only Now you get the issue with. But whatever Now may be being picky about, my working hypothesis remains that it’s CF doing it, and they need to bottom it for you.

[NeilG]

@RoyB hi again… my conclusion is it’s me! In fact, not me me, but our predominantly Apple ecology in the household and the latest privacy spells they are using in the ongoing war with the personal data eaters. I won’t even pretend I understand any of it or how it works because it is such a sufficiently technology that appears to be like magic to me. But a min ago I visit a website and a message popped up to say how I have an adblocker active or something hence me seeing the message. Long story short I think the devices themselves are rejecting NowTV as the machine learning algorithms that drive it all have id’ed it as a potential threat. Sure enough in the last day alone my iPhone tells me it blocked 17 trackers from NowTV.com. But this once again proves that a) Now trying to increase the revenue stream have tweaked their trackers and added more, perhaps in those using the special introductory offers like we did (possibly said so in the smallprint), or/and 2) Apple has cranked up its chaos magic to protect its users from those seeking to steal our data, thus making them lose value for Apple who possibly deems it its own. Kinda like Pootin and Ukraine. Delusions make the world go round. In any case, I am not accepting that this could be prevented before wasting me my time and the two months of unused subscription. C.F. Has nothing to do with it. Even if they do, I cannot fault them for they have been the answer to me prayers.  Besides, I did ask. And it is nothing to do with them. 😞 

shame I can’t send you some screenshots…