Update Now TV app for apple TV

[Anonymous User]

Will the Now TV app for Apple TV ever get an update?

The current version is complete rubbish and makes me regret ever getting a Now TV pass.

Unless there is an update my Now TV experience will be very short indeed.

[Clem_Dye]

Releasing an update without Boost support seems pointless to me, and I certainly wouldn’t use any updated version on an ATV box without it. Given the recent releases — NowTV+Boost on newer Sony TVs for example, I wonder if the real focus is Android at present? Humax is due to release its new Freeview PVR this month, which is Android-based. I wonder if the NowTV app. will work on that?

As much as I want to buy an Apple TV box, unless a full-fat NowTV app. is up for grabs I won’t be bothering.

TBH, I’m not really surprised by the lack of progress of a decent ATV app. The NowTV software is a bit of a dog’s dinner to my mind. Perhaps it’s just too difficult to unravel things for the Apple TV platform. The logic that being being able to offer your wares on just about any streaming platform so as to encourage uptake doesn’t seem to matter to Sky, I suppose. I don’t understand the logic of killing off the NowTV box that had an Ethernet port. Wi-fi streaming doesn’t work for everyone, but at present it’s a wireless Roku/NowTV streamer or nothing, if you want a plug-in device. Ultimately, I don’t think that Sky really cares that much, but it needs to, as it no longer has the same market presence as it once did.

[MrZippy]

The beta NowTV app looks and functions the same as the Roku (NowTV box) one, expect the left slide out menu for home, live TV is at the bottom. Even though on tvOS it should be at the top. Even the text entry is Roku, they seem to have spent a lot of time making this fit their brand, over functionality.

[Anonymous User]

Roku now do a 4K HDR streaming bar which can connect to Ethernet via an adapter which is sold separately.

[ukbobboy]

@Anonymous User 

Yeah Mina

Here's a picture:

UK Bob

[Anonymous User]

I have been in contact with Now TV support since July regarding the incredibly poor support the Apple TV app has been given. It hasn’t been updated since 2015 and is still a 1.0 release. 

I’ve been in contact with them regularly just asking for simple features such as being able to access my watchlist etc and just kept being told the tech team are working on an update. I was then told that they were waiting on Apple as without this they couldn’t release an update. I found this very odd so I spoke directly to Apple this week and told them about this and they were incredibly confused. They asked me to contact their legal team and I let NowTV I’d been given these details by Apple and have now been in contact with Apple’s legal department. 

I got a response yesterday that apparently an updated app will be being released by the end of November. 

just all seems a smidge coincidental that nothing has happened for 5 years for customers using an Apple TV but as soon as a mention of a customer now being in contact with Apple’s legal team, after being told updates were being delayed by them and not Now TV, that an update is now supposedly on the way imminently. 

Anyhow, fingers crossed for all of us who just want the same functionality on the Apple TV app as every other version of it on iOS.

[p023031]

I’ve been saying for months that this is a commercial issue rather than a technical one. 

The post above is quite revealing. If they are blaming Apple, I suspect it will be about attempting to get a reduced commission on subscriptions taken out via iOS. I think Amazon did manage to do this but it is on a case by case basis which would need negotiating. 

[Anonymous User]

When I spoke to the representative at Apple they stated that there would be nothing they would be doing to actively prevent Now TV from adding simple functionality like watchlists etc from the app and that they were free to add these whenever they wanted so having been told by Now TV hat they dearly wanted to help me but Apple was stopping them from providing the feature was what I found very dubious.

[Clem_Dye]

The Roku bar is not much help unless you don’t already have some sort of sound bar.

[Clem_Dye]

This is just all a load of guff. Why don’t Sky just tell us that they have no intention of updating the NowTV app. for AppleTV boxes? Fiddling around adding the odd feature here or there is no substitute for a full update including the Boost option. Once you accept that Sky sees its customers as a necessary inconvenience, albeit one that is expected to pay ever-increasing fees for a diminishing service (when the NowTV app. is compared to the  competition), then it’s easy to move on. I strongly suspect that Sky’s focus is getting its app. on smart TVs, where the operating environment is more stable and predictable compared to the ceaseless churn that is Apple’s TvOS. If there is a plan for an updated app., then publicise the fact, rather than have owners of AppleTV set in a permanent state of expectation.

[Enapace]

@Clem_Dye 

It is definitely happening probably within the next two weeks the beta will be released maybe not everything we want though.