Meridian Unplugged - Powered by MrTechGuy.co.uk Forums Thread Like Summary - Streaming HD TV channels (UK)

I live in Southampton and currently receive “free to air” HD channels from the Isle of Wight Rowridge transmitter.

Some of these channels, the ones we predominantly watch, are soon to be cut off to make way for 5G telecoms.

My alternative is to stream them. I find the streaming capabilities of devices such as the TV set, the pvr or the Oppo painfully slow to get going. Have good internet connect (100Mb/s +).

Advice on the best TV streaming devices would be appreciated.

Thanks.

We bought several of the NowTV branded Roku boxes. Even before taking into account that for some of them we paid less that the value of the supplied passes (we even paid as low at £15 which included 3 months Entertainment or 2 months Cinema passes), they are great little boxes that just work. Maybe not lightning quick, but certainly now slow. Without any addon, we get HD out of them, although the feed may not be any more than 720p. Quite simply, we don't care, the picture is pretty good most of the time and when its not, there is an explanation, like wifi speed.

Not sure what the Now TV is offering now, but these little Roku boxes have transformed how we watch TV and have been a blessing over lockdown with a nightly episode from some boxset from a catchup service. It also saved our bacon for Formula 1. Buy the time our £33.99 sports pass runs out, we will have got 4 race weekends out of them. I believe same the following month if races align nicely. Yet to try Netflix out on them yet though.

If you came across them on a supermarket deal and bought one just for the pass, you probably wouldn't bother to get a more expensive solution out of its box.

Its locked into NowTV and major UK catchup services (BBC, ITV, C4, 5, UK TV) albeit with a very limited app store.

We don't have it connected to anything other than TV. It has HDMI out only iirc, and audio settings are auto, PCM stereo, Dolby digital, Dolby digital plus, Dolby digital DTS, Dolby digital plus DTS, but we not tried it in anything other than stereo. The help mentions spdif, but I dont know if that generic or the hardware supports it.

What I like about Now TV is the ability to subscribe to a month, then immediately cancel, and then not have to worry about it auto renewing. Quite often, after you cancel, they offer you some deal, like 3 months entertainment for £4/month. I'm not a fan of subscription services, but this one works for me.

We've had no issues with Netflix on the 4K Apple TV. Not sure about searching for programmes from the main menu, but everything works fine from within the Netflix app.

Netflix offers different subscription tiers: SD, HD, and UHD. You get what you are willing to pay for.

Selected Amazon Prime content is available in UHD at no extra cost.

On AppleTV4K, all NowTV content is in 720p. This isn’t an issue on most content. The exception is Sky Sports, which is ‘filmic’ in nature.

List of devices/supported resolutions.

I'd argue (and my wife would agree!) that 4K is a massive step up from HD and, while I suspect part of this is due to the increased resolution of the display, part of it is probably down to better electronics in the decoder.

Either way, you're future-proofed with 4K.