So, I'm a computer scientist and I've been playing with this service, not a noob when it comes to this kind of thing. I like the content of Now TV (Especially stargate sg1, Atlantis, and universe) But, oh man it has the absolute worst quality from any current paid streaming service and worse than even a lot of free ones. Firstly, what kind of compression format are you using? The visual artifacts are insane, to the point of being a blocky mess when you go into a scene with even a minor amount of movement. I understand you want to save money on infrastructure, but compression this horrendous to the point it looks like VHS is wholeheartedly unacceptable. I have multiple HDCP compatible devices and fiber internet, so it's not my end which is the bottleneck. If you want to compete with Amazon or Netflix, you need to improve this drastically. It's ridiculously bad. Then let's move onto whatever decoding algorithm you use for the now tv pc player, are you software rendering this? The CPU utilization is insane, on all my PCs (I have 8, ranging from a core m6y30 to a 12 core Xeon skylake). Also the audio quality, it sounds massively clipped and compressed, I can barely make out what's being said by people. (This is one of my biggest issues with the service, hearing what's said in a show is kinda fundamental...) Then let's move on to resolution, not having 1080p streaming on PC is pathetic, let alone that the max streaming quality on the Windows 10 app or web player looks like unbelievably compressed 480p. Oh, finally, your website and app could do with a massive UI redesign. With the experience you provide, how do you expect to expand into the market and compete with netflix and Amazon. I don't think you offer even close to the amount of service as them, this service feels like BBC iplayer when it was just released back in 2007. You need to improve this service, I really want you to be successful but when it's this bad, I can't be supportive.
Please do something...
