How to Choose the Best NowTV Package in 2024 (+ Review)

I first discovered NOW TV when Sky launched it back in 2012 as a movie-only streaming platform. Since those early days, the service has evolved considerably, expanding to include live TV, movie channels, box set programs, and extensive sports coverage. Earlier this year, I noticed the platform underwent a rebrand, dropping the ‘TV’ from its name to become simply NOW, along with several changes to its service offerings.

While owned by Sky, NOW is separate from Sky Go and Sky Q. NOW requires no satellite, no installation, and no contract. It’s also cheaper than its more full-service brethren (Sky and Virgin satellite services).

However, NOW costs more than rival streamers Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+. And while it has less overall content, it fills a niche of new episodes of various popular American programs.

NOW Memberships

Whereas NOW TV previously had content passes, today the service also offers memberships. NOW currently offers four Memberships: Entertainment, Cinema, Sports, and Hayu. There are no contracts and no commitments (like Sky Q’s 18-months).

Each Membership is separate from the others, so you can subscribe to one or more, canceling and switching plans with every 30-day period.

With the exception of Hayu, each Membership has its own slate of channels and box sets. NOW Hayu only has box sets.

Entertainment Membership

Formerly the Entertainment Pass. The Entertainment Membership covers a variety of live TV and generic kids programming.

Live channels you can watch as an Entertainment Member:

Kid’s channels included:

• Boomerang
• Cartoon Network
• Cartoonito
• Nickelodeon
• Nick Jr
• NickToons.

Some popular programs and kid’s shows:

Note that children’s movies are part of the Cinema membership; these channels are almost exclusively on live TV.

Sky Atlantic is the only channel with premium American programs like Game of Thrones and Succession, and you can watch it only through Sky Q or NOW. Otherwise, you will have to wait for it to come to Netflix or Amazon, or for HBO Max to come to the UK.

NOW also provides programming from all these channels as catch-up content and box sets, except for Sky Showcase and Cartoonito.

Peacock, Milkshake!, CBeebies, and CBBC all have box sets available to watch, but no live channels. Peacock’s US shows and movies include:

• Saved by the Bell (2020)
• House
• Saturday Night Live
• Heroes
• United 93
• Tower Heist

The Entertainment Membership has a seven-day free trial and is £9.99/mo thereafter.

Cinema Membership

NOW’s Cinema Membership offers over 1000 films from Sky Cinema, featuring a new film premiere every day. It’s a great way to keep up with the latest Hollywood blockbusters months before Netflix or Amazon get them.

The channels included in a Cinema Membership are:

Note that Drama is renamed “Christmas” during the holiday season and Select is “Best of” at the end of the year (currently “Best of 2021”).

Cinema Memberships cost £9.99/mo, after a seven-day free trial.

Hayu Membership

Hayu is focused exclusively on all types of reality TV from the salacious to the sagacious. It claims over 8000 episodes; both full box sets of classics and the latest episodes available the same day as in the US.

From Real Housewives to Below Deck, home improvement, and real estate to true crime and unsolved mysteries, it’s all the celebrity lifestyle and workplace drama you can handle.

Beyond keeping up with the Kardashians, Hayu has tons of guilty pleasures, like:

• The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City
• The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls’ Trip
• The Real Housewives of Potomac
• Below Deck
• The Real Housewives of Melbourne
• Vanderpump Rules
• Project Runway
• The Bachelorette
• Siwa’s Dance Pop Revolution
• Winter House
• Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles.

Hayu has no live channels, it’s only on-demand. Membership is £4.99/mo after a 7-day free trial.

NOW Sports Membership

Sports Membership brings you the best of Sky Sports via a flexible structure.

Save on NOW TV

You get access to Premier League games, Sky Bet EFL Championship (including the Carabao Cup quarter-final), League One, SPFL (including the Scottish Premiership), Bundesliga, American MLS League, and much more.

EFL matches and F1 Race Control offer Bonus Streams, extra channels that provide additional content. Your mobile app also has a convenient button to add an event to your calendar.

NOW Sports Members get these live channels:

Main Event includes live Premier League football plus international qualifiers and the biggest live events from other channels. Action includes NFL for the duration of the American football season.

Members can also access 1300+ hours of on-demand sports content. This includes match highlights, documentaries, and more.

Membership does not include pay-per-view events such as boxing matches. Those are available through Sky Sports Box Office.

NOW Sports Price

Day Memberships, good for 24 hours, are £9.99 one-off, no automatic renewal. Monthly Memberships are £33.99/mo (and do automatically renew).

Save on NOW TV

There’s no 7-day free trial like the other Memberships, but you can try out a Day Membership before you splash out for a full month. Bonus Streams are only available to Sports Month Members.

If you order a Sports Day Membership for £9.99, you can get a Mobile Month Membership for 8 months, free

Note that you only get 5 available channels on your smartphone with this one.

NOW Broadband

You can also get your broadband internet service through NOW although you don’t need to do so in order to get NOW’s TV service. But NOW Broadband is one of the most reasonably-priced services on the market today, so it’s worth considering.

Save on NOW TV

It works off a similar principle as the TV streaming service: no contract, pay as you go, cancel anytime. However, unlike the TV service, there’s a trade-off: if you choose to proceed with no contract, there’s a £60 set-up fee.

That fee is completely waived with the “Saver” option, but you’re locked into a 12-month contract (with penalties for early cancellation). However, this is still shorter than most other services’ 18-month contracts.

Note that a £5 delivery fee for the router applies to all broadband plans.

NOW Broadband Packages

NOW Broadband features 3 unlimited bandwidth data speeds plans:

Save on NOW TV

• Brilliant Broadband (average speed 11Mbps) — £25 a month
• Fab Fibre (average speed 36Mbps) — £32 a month
• Super Fibre (average speed 63Mbps) — £35 a month.

All prices include line rental.

NOW also has your landline covered with three calling plans:

• Pay as you call — no monthly charge
• Evening (7pm – 7am weekdays) and weekend calls (all day Saturday & Sunday) — £4 a month
• Anytime calls — £8 a month for unlimited calls within the UK to either landline or mobile numbers

Caller display and a few other features are included at no extra charge. NOW promises “easy switching.” If you’re currently with BT, TalkTalk, EE, or Plusnet, they will spare you the hassle of dealing with your current provider and do it for you.

For parents, there’s NOW Broadband Buddy, a free tool that gives adults control over which websites are accessible and when along with phishing and malware protection.

NOW Broadband Deals

Here are some current deals offered by NOW Broadband:

Save on NOW TV

• Super Fibre: £20/mo plus free Anytime calls for 12 months. That’s a savings of £18/mo.
• Fab Fibre: £20/mo plus free Anytime calls for 12 months — a £15/mo savings.
• Brilliant Broadband: £18/mo and free Anytime calls for 12 months, which is also a savings of £15/mo.

There’s also a combo bundle with NOW TV service: get Fab Fibre (that’s the middle tier) for £20/mo (regularly £32/mo) and an Entertainment Membership (that’s the TV one) for £4.99/mo (half off).

NOW Boost

NOW Boost is an add-on. It is available with any Memberships you are subscribed to and comes with three main benefits:

1. Add-free: Removes most adverts from on-demand content
2. Audio-Video: Provides Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound and up to 1080p resolution (where available). You also get 50 frames per second on sports channels (assuming your device can handle it)
3. Multi-Stream: Watch on up to 3 TVs or devices at a time.

Without Boost, you will experience unskippable adverts before programs and movies. Your picture resolution will also cap out at 720p, and you can only stream on one device at a time.

You will require a minimum internet speed of 12Mbps for HD streaming. Even with Boost, adverts will still be present on live channels, and promotional trailers for other Sky content will still appear on on-demand content.

NOW Boost is only £5/mo, but many customers find the standard picture quality so poor, that the number of standard streaming devices was reduced from 2 to 1.

NOW Streaming Devices

NOW runs on most devices. If your kitchen sink had an HDMI port, you could find a NOW app for it.

Here is the list is of supported devices:

• Select LG, Samsung, Sony, and Hisense smart TV models
• Amazon Fire TV edition
• Amazon Fire TV, Stick, Cube, and Soundbars
• Apple TV (4th generation)
• Roku
• Chromecast
• BT TV Box
• YouView Box
• NOW Smart Stick, Smart Box, and Black Box
• Android devices
• iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch
• Windows tablet
• Windows or Mac laptop or desktop computers
• Xbox One and Series X/S
• Playstation 4 and 5.

Now Smart Stick

About the same time NOW TV was rebranded as NOW, it started to phase out its NOW Smart Stick and set-top boxes. This is confusing since NOW’s Help Centre makes many references to it and even recommends using the Smart Stick while avoiding any mention of how to get it.

You can, however, still get them second-hand preloaded with apps such as:

• BBC iPlayer
• ITV Hub
• All 4
• Demand 5.

Plus you can download Netflix, YouTube, Spotify, BBC News, BBC Sports, Fox News, Sky News, TED Talks, and many more apps from the app store. It also features a voice-activated remote and interactive TV.

Note that eventually, these devices will stop working as NOW changes its system. But for the time being, it is still an option.

Web Browsers

Beware that if a PC or Mac is your video entertainment device of choice, you can’t just load your videos up in your browser, you have to use NOW’s player.

This wouldn’t be so bad except the app itself hasn’t got any title-browsing capabilities. So you have to find what you want to watch in your browser and click on it to open in the player. When that show or movie is over, you have to repeat the process.

Unsupported Devices

The following devices are NOT supported:

• Panasonic or Toshiba Smart TVs
• 2nd or 3rd generation Apple TV
• NOW “White Box”
• Older YouView boxes model numbers DTR-T1000, DTR-T1010 and Talk Talk’s DN370T box
• Android 4.0 or earlier
• Kindle Fire HD devices
• Windows smartphones
• Using AirPlay to stream or mirror NOW from any iOS device
• Chromebook
• Nintendo Wii and Switch.

Wrapping Up

NOW is an inexpensive month-to-month way to watch some of the most popular Sky programs. If you want to watch the most recent episodes of new shows, especially buzzy American ones, you can do so without paying more.

We recommend adding NOW Boost. It is pretty much a must for TV fans, film buffs, or sports fans — especially if the 720p standard definition and repetitive ads are a bit of a put-off. The same goes if you have a big family or lots of devices. One stream at a time just won’t cut it.

NOW is a good option for those without access or budget for a satellite subscription.

FAQs

Is NOW TV better than Sky?

Whether NOW is better than Sky depends on what your viewing needs and budget are. NOW’s biggest strength is flexibility and freedom. If you’re only coming for the latest season of Succession, you can subscribe to the Entertainment Membership for as long as you need to. Or if you’re a die-hard fan of the Premier League, then you can sign up for the Month Sports Membership in August and cancel in the Spring.

If you watch a lot of telly all year round, are into Ultra-HD/4K, own a Dolby Atmos sound system, or just enjoy having more than 50 channels available, Sky is the way to go.

Can I record live TV on NOW?

You can only record live TV on NOW via the program guide on the BT TV Box if you pay for your NOW Membership(s) through BT. Otherwise, you can’t record any live TV. You can pause and rewind the live TV channels for up to 30 minutes (2 hours with the BT TV Box) if your device allows. Many shows are available on catch-up for up to 30 days after they first air.

What is the Mobile Sports Pass?

The Mobile Sports Pass, most recently known as the Sports Mobile Month Membership, is currently not available except as a free bonus to new Sports Members who get a Sports Day Membership. It was a £5.99/mo subscription that would let you watch Premier League, Action, Arena, Racing, and News on your Android or iOS smartphone.

NOW Boost, on-demand content, and bonus streams are unavailable for mobile members. Also, note that the mobile membership only allows one stream at a time.

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Alanna Baker

Alanna Baker was the Streaming Content Editor at Hotdog.com, specializing in comprehensive streaming coverage across various genres, with a particular focus on sports and Sling TV offerings. With a background in literature and education, coupled with extensive experience in media and law, Alanna brings a unique perspective to the streaming industry.

Her expertise stems from being an early adopter of various entertainment technologies, from mail-order Netflix to modern streaming platforms. Alanna's in-depth knowledge of Sling TV's modular service and her ability to cover diverse streaming content make her a key expert in navigating the complex landscape of modern streaming options, especially in sports and entertainment.

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