Concern for Sky’s NOW TV Service on TalkTalk and BT’s YouView TV Platform

At least part of Sky’s (Sky Broadband) popular Internet-based NOW TV service, which offers a mix of premium TV, Sport and Movie content (including live channels) delivered via broadband, could vanish from BT and TalkTalk’s TV services unless the native YouView platform can be adapted to support live TV channel streaming.

Customers who subscribe to the increasingly popular NOW TV service pay from just £6.99 per month and this gives them access to a large variety of Sky’s most popular entertainment channels, including live and catch-up TV content (various Sports and Movie packages are also available, at extra cost).

Subscribers can also purchase a tiny NOW TV Set-Top-Box (STB) for a one-off payment of just £9.99, which isn’t mandatory because you can just as easily watch the content via an ordinary web browser or any other of 50 supported platforms / devices (Android, iOS etc.).

At present customers who take one of BT or TalkTalk’s YouView (IPTV) based TV products can also use a special NOW TV app on the related STBs to access the live channels via their proprietary systems, although it was revealed last month (here) that Sky has to pay an annual fee of £250,000 to the ISPs in order for them to include support for this.

Sadly the native YouView platform, which is supported as part of a Joint Venture by BT, TalkTalk, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 and Arqiva, doesn’t currently accommodate live streaming over-the-top (i.e. the NOW TV catch-up content would work but not the live TV channels). Naturally Sky would like to cut out the £250k fee it pays to BT and TalkTalk, yet this will only work if it can reach an agreement with YouView’s management.

A Sky Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk (canned statement):

“Sky remains committed to giving YouView customers the full NOW TV experience and has been working for some time with YouView management to achieve this.”

Early rumours suggested that if Sky cannot reach an agreement with YouView then it may decide to pull either NOW TV’s live channel support or possibly the entire app from BT and TalkTalk’s YouView based IPTV platforms, which some reports claim could allegedly impact almost 1 million subscribers. But Sky, which refuses to divulge how many NOW TV customers it has via BT and TalkTalk’s service, have since informed ISPreview.co.uk that the actual figure is less than a million and they suggest that the earlier claim is based on potential customers.

Sky will no doubt be keen that any NOW TV customers get the full experience and are still in discussions with YouView about when or even if they will be adding the needed capability. But the media giant refused to speculate over that might happen, not least because it involves a commercial relationship.

Admittedly removing NOW TV from BT and TalkTalk would be somewhat of a double edged sword. Sky might initially save money, yet they could potentially end up losing customers because not everybody has the space for another set-top-box or wants to watch TV shows via their browser or other non-TV devices.

On the other hand the standalone NOW TV (Roku) box is just £9.99 and that will hardly break the bank for those keen enough to retain access, thus BT and TalkTalk might potentially lose out through their platforms becoming less attractive.