For Scottish buyers, STV’s catch-up is on-board too. Others on offer include the anime streamer Crunchyroll, music video portal Vivo and internet radio player TuneIn. YouTube is one of a handful of apps you’ll want to try outside of the catch-up crowd, and with Netflix recently added across all of Now TV's devices, you can easily switch between Netflix Originals like Bojack Horseman and your favorite YouTube videos. However, whether you get the very latest version of each’s interface is down to these third parties, not Sky.įor example, BBC iPlayer looks much the same as it does on our PS4, but YouTube appears to have a slightly older version. These run very well, with none of the stuttery lag that affects some older smart TV systems. All of the most popular UK catch-up services are here: BBC iPlayer, All 4, Demand 5 and ITV player. You get a more familiar experience when using most of the Now TV Smart Stick’s third-party apps. Movies aren’t siphoned off into an army of sub-genres based on your previous viewing habits, instead leaving you to largely trawl through “classic” genre libraries with 100-400 films in each. Videos take a beat or two to load, too.Ī matter-of-fact style continues in the TV guide and Now TV sections. It doesn’t look flashy, though, and while navigation feels quick pages of content can take a second or so to populate even with a 130 Mbps home broadband connection. The Sky Now TV Smart Stick has a simple interface that’s closer to a TV’s menu system than the Amazon Fire TV Stick’s, which looks a lot like Netflix’s UI. It’s because that’s a BBC iPlayer show, not a Now TV one. We asked the Now TV Smart Stick for “Graham Norton” content, and while The Graham Norton Show was right there on the home screen promoted as Highlight content, the voice search came up with nothing. You need to speak quite clearly to be understood and keyword-based results only work for Now TV content. However, voice recognition and the smarts of this system are far more simplistic than those of Amazon's Echo or Google Home.

“Horror TV shows” and “thriller movies” get you the results you'd expect, for example. It’s also useful for finding particular genres of film or TV shows. You can say “Home” to go back to the home screen, or launch apps like “All 4” or “iPlayer” just by saying their name. Say the name of a director or actor and the Now TV Smart Stick will find relevant Now TV content.

Press this and a little pinhole mic under the power button starts listening to your voice. The remote’s most interesting button is the little microphone, though.

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