Mac OS now forced to use Now Tv APP

[Anonymous User]

I just want to put a summary up of the problems I'm now having trying to watch NowTV on my Mac.

I think a lot of people are in the same position. I would ask the mods to read and understand and not blindly post boilerplate replies to problems that aren't being highighted. I would also ask the mods not to post links to out of date help pages.

1. I used to watch using the Silverlight plugin on Safari as the Now TV app was awful (from months ago).

2. Today, when I try to use this method it does not work. This seems to be an issue with the website. The website now expects to launch the (external) NowTV app.

3. I installed the new version 2.01 of the NowTV app.

4. The picture quality is ok, the sound quality is awful (by comparison to other devices).

I think it is impossible (as of right now, 1st August 2017) to use the Silverlight plugin method to watch NowTV on MacOS. 

Therefore, the only supported and possible way of watching NowTV on a Mac is the NowTV player which is clearly not fit for purpose (see many other posts on this forum). 

So, to conclude, there isn't currently a way to watch NowTv on a Mac that is up to the quality we expect. 

All we can do is watch on a different device. 

Please correct me if I'm wrong. 

OSX El Capitan, Safari 9.1.3, NowTv Player 2.01

[Anonymous User]

Not sure if this is a good solution or not, but your post hinted to me that it was NowTV that had deliberately disabled silverlight support on MAC. I'd been having trouble getting it working at all since getting a new entertainment pass (was ok a couple of months ago).

Given that they're probably doing this based on user agent I just tried this plugin for firefox (52.2.1 ESR):

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-switcher/

and when I make it use the following user agent:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:18.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/18.0

it appears to be playing nowTV video again.

Hope this helps. NowTV developers, please can you NOT disable stuff like that without giving users the information they need to make stuff work?

Better still, perhaps it's time to develop the HTML5 version that everyone is waiting for? Other online streaming services are now many years ahead in this.

[Anonymous User]

Hi grumpymacuser,

Firstly, I second your comment regarding a HTML5 version. Other vendors have this in place.

I did try running NowTV on an old version of Firefox (51) that supported Silverlight (as well as Safari and Chrome). So I also came to the conclusion that NowTV had deliberately disabled silverlight support on MAC. 

I didn't think of spoofing the user agent though - that works! I'll get a ESR copy of Firefox as v.51 seems to update itself even if you set updates off. I had to reinstall FireFox to retest. Annoyingly NowTv thinks I'm running another device.  

But many thanks for replying and making it so I don't have to use the awful nowTV player.

-

To (re)summarise: There doesn't seem to be a way to use the current versions of Safari, Chrome or Firefox on a Mac to watch NowTV. You have to use the terrible NowTV player.

For those who want to install an older (potentially less secure) version of Firefox, that supports Silverlight you can do this but you will also need to use a User Agent Switcher to make NowTV think you're not on a Mac. Perhaps the forum mods aren't allowed to suggest this as you do so at your own risk etc.

I'd like to add that should any NowTV devlopers read the forums, it would be better if you don't disable stuff without having a proper fix in place. The NowTV player isn't fit for purpose and isn't a solution at the moment.