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Anonymous User
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Constantly dropping picture quality

Hi everyone,

My problem is the picture quality keeps dropping to insanely pixelated then goes back up to HD for a bit and drops again, making the watching of anything absolutely unenjoybable. I have a 1080p HD TV and decent wifi connection. Any ideas if there is a setting similar to YouTube where the picture quality changes when the Internet slows down and whether it can be turned off?

Thanks in advance for any help
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION
Anonymous User
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Hi @Anonymous User

 

Thanks for your post and welcome to the forum.  Like most providers, NOW TV uses adaptive bitrates, this can't be overidden and aims to give you the best quality picture your connection can support.  If you're experiencing fluctuations in quality, a wired connection to your box is always preferable to wireless. 

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157 REPLIES 157
Anonymous User
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I have the same issue here, have tried all the troubleshooting on both a now tv box and my samsung tv, connect via wired connection wight an 80mb broadband service but constantly getting drops of stream quality from well over 4000 to just 90 seems the only way to get the quality back up is to stop the stream and reconnect absolutely useless watching live movies as by the time you put your pin in you lost a chuck of the action.  I've now cancelled my movies pass and only have the entertainment pass becuase it was free from McDonnalds when thats finished I will not be a now tv customer anymore (yes Netflix and Amazon (4k streams) work great so I've come to the conclusion that the now tv automatic stream quality system works backwards and as this problem has been affection so many people from the start the only thing now tv do is up the price!

Anonymous User
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I'm suffering with this aswell. Flick on a episode of the wire of Got and it's like lego characters. Flick to the Netflix app and its pure HD no buffer, no problem. Definitely not my connection 

Anonymous User
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I get this on a Roku 1 box. After maybe an hour or so of good streaming the picture decays into an unviewable mess.

 

It takes about 5 minutes to reboot the thing back to watching: not good on live sports.  It sometimes helps a bit.

 

I tried installing the Windows Store app, but then I'm into the "clever" (and utterly broken) 'intelligence' that Now TV attempts to do to count the number of simulatenous streams.  The app tells me to stop the other stream.  Stop the Roku, keep trying the app - it still complains.

 

This is not acceptable when watching live sports, Now.  I don't care if you say "please try later" - that's not the point.  You either need to fix the streaming quality issue or the stream counting issue.  To have both is money grabbing laziness.

 

(There is NO problem for any other streaming service)

Anonymous User
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Same as above!

I've sacked NowTV off now due to the consistent poor quality issues. 

I'm using a Samsung Smart TV wired direct via ethernet 

Tried all steps mentioned but the picture quality keeps dropping.

 

It MUST be a problem at NowTV's end because Netflix & Amazon Prime Video & BBC iplayer & ITV Hub & Ch4.... all work fine!

 

Anonymous User
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Here we are 4 years down the road from the first post on this thread and the issues still persist.

I will not be renewing when my current 3 months expire.

Dreadful service.

Anonymous User
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Just found this, sorry I posted and hadn't seen this.

 

So it's not just me and this service really is this bad!

Anonymous User
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I've just cancelled my subscription. You can cancel it now and you'll continue to get whatever dubious service you have been getting until your subscription runs out.

 

Everything about Now TV is a joke. They drop access to TV series in the middle of you watching them (they also list having series when they don't have the complete series), they have some weird sound set up which meant I couldn't use a bluetooth speaker with my laptop when connected to a TV. They have a pretty low device cap - 6 I think it was which seems enough but when you have a laptop, phone, tablet, TV and perhaps another computer or TV/device that's it!

 

Their one redeeming feature was the occasional blockbuster movie, but I'd prefer to save my subscription and pay to rent exactly what I want. I'd still be better off renting 2-3 a month.

Anonymous User
Not applicable

So monitoring the connection from the streaming service I get a consistent 4830 which does not vary. However the picture quality does. Which means there actual service serving the streaming is the issue for me. Not much I can do about that so other than complain and expect it to fall on deaf ears.