Now tv 4k

[Rich19861112]

So now tv have introduced a boost option to add 4k channels and on demand. It’s called ultra boost.

when will ee tv Apple TV users etc be able to receive this?

[MartinH416]

Find myself moving from disenchanted, through disappointed to frankly feeling misled. If I am charitable i could put some of it down to poor sales/product training/streams but I suspect the structure of the sales teams and rewards are a factor. I won't reel off the whole story but absolutely nothing has gone as promised with my 'no other option' move to EE from BT/Sky where I was promised faster, cheaper and better. It's been a disaster and despite interacting with  several people that 'try' to help things don't get corrected, 

On the content side - the absence of 4k content for both Now TV and Sports content was a surprise/shock and we wouldn't have moved from Sky if we had understood the actual position.  

Ultra Boost sounds as if it would at least add back the 4k Sky Sports and perhaps a sprinkling of TV content but only if I use my Apple TV/Fire Cube ?

I really would like to get some sort of comment from EE regarding when 4k Now offerings will be available (Ultra Boost) and if it won't be available before the year end exactly what do they recommend customers do. I would like to think I could just ring up and ask but I have spent more hours talking to EE reps than my family since migrating and probably double that listening to music on hold. 

I apologise for the grumpy tone but it has been exasperating and such a poor experience so far. Some good news would help. 

[Midnight_Voice]

@MartinH416 

I don’t know what BT/Sky means in this context; what did you have before?

I have a contract with BT, and have survived several attempts to move me to EE. I would regard doing that as breach of contract, and proceed accordingly.

So I don’t know what your ‘no other option’ was; the truth? Not quite the truth? A downright lie? I do hope not the latter….

If you want UltraBoost right now, you have to give up on having Now from EETV, at least on the membership(s) you want it on. You may be able to get Ultraboost via your Apple TV or Firecube, but you will need a direct Now account for this.

Depending on your plan, this may be problematic to achieve, but you could talk to EETV as to the best way to achieve this. They may sabre-rattle about early termination fees; but it’s been so long that Now has had UltraBoost with no prospect of us getting it in any defined timescale that I think you have a reasonable case for dropping  EETV Now without penalty. Especially if you promise to come back the moment EETV can actually deliver it 😛

[hooba]

There are no technical or hardware limitations that apply to the Pro box or EE AppleTV that prevent the delivery of Now UltraBoost.

The issue is the EE ordering system. It doesn’t work. Try switching packages online and you’re told to make a phone call whereby an agent will make the relevant change manually.

There is no facility, either online or via phoning an Agent, to order Now UltraBoost. Because the ordering system can’t currently handle that. The ‘plan’ is that at some point EE finish building their ordering system - at which point changes to packages can be made online by customers, and there’ll also be functionality for ordering Now UltraBoost.

When will that plan be realised? Who knows? Could be next week / month / year / year after.

It’s a pretty grim state of affairs - made even worse by customers being actively encouraged away from BT to EE. It’s a crazy state of affairs, with little regard to customers. BT decided to shove everyone EE’s way, despite the EE ordering system being absolutely nowhere near ready. I’ve learnt the hard way over the years not to enter into any sort of agreement with a company based upon features that will, at some unspecified point, eventually be delivered. 

I was migrated from BT to EE at the start of September this year. To be fair it was reasonably straight forward - but to be clear I didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter. The only remaining issue is that I can no longer access my EE mobile account online. It needs to be linked manually. They’ve tried. They’ve failed. I’ve lost the will. 

As an aside - the switch from BT to EE involved a Credit Check; plus as far as financial institutions are concerned I’ve only had my current mobile number for 3 months (despite having had that number for 20+ years). On the plus side at the point of migration I cancelled all of my TV packages other than TNT sport. I now contract directly with NowTV for Sport, Movies, Entertainment, and Ultraboost - which I access through an AppleTV 4K. And that works very well.

[Midnight_Voice]

@hooba 

My understanding is that you are wrong about ‘no technical or hardware limitations’, at least as far as the Box Pro and the Box Mini go, and that neither of these will currently support UltraBoost.

As you likely have a Box Mini, you could try logging on to your direct Now account on it; I predict your UltraBoost will be regarded as only granting you SD (EETV parlance) / HD Ready (Now parlance), so no 5.1 available.

Nothing that can’t be fixed in the current exercise, but something that hasn’t been fixed yet.

[hooba]

@Midnight_Voice I think it was DarrenDev that said there were zero limitations. Can be delivered over multicast without issue. See page 9 of this thread. He's also said elsewhere in the thread that a software update isn't required for the multicast channels (page 8).

There's nothing special about 'Ultraboost' - it's a brand name that denotes 4K HDR and Atmos. Which the box can clearly do already. What do you think the 'technical or hardware limitations' are?

I don't have a mini-box, do still have a Pro box though - on that using my Now direct credentials I get HD and 5.1. So that app clearly needs an update (software).

[MartinH416]

I have been a BT customer since 1978 and had the 900 package. Had Sky pretty much since  its launch and have had Sky Q since its launch. Just got to the end of our tether with Sky who TBH we have stupidly allowed to charge us full price ever since. So I rang BT and asked for their TV package (we already had BT/TNT sports). I was told that I had to move to EE and BTW they had a great and faster broadband package. Long long conversation ensuring that I understood that we would be able to replace everything we had etc. Started to confirm the order and it stopped after the Broadband order due to a system problem. Was told to wait for that to fulfil before ringing in to arrange the TV services, oh and BTW what about mobiles. So (stupidly it now seems) I moved our mobiles across too because that's on a separate system.  

So since then discovered

- we can't have the faster service without losing landline - which we agreed to.

- if you have their 1.3? GB service  (which now seems to be only offered as 1.0) i.e. the service that we lost the landline to get - then they can't cross sell you any other product due to it being on a  different sales system. So they had to downgrade me back to what I already had to sell me content! This 1.3gb was very competitively priced and that benefit seems to have disappeared. 

After months of incorrect billing (they were billing me for 2 broadband services for a while) they managed to close the shortlived faster BB account but as a result I still have 2 IDs with different products linked to each. I can't tell you how many hours it's taken to get to this point but I am now paying for Cyber security despite being reassured I wouldn't have to. I'll stop there but there's a lot more. 

Much of this chaos is caused I think, as the post from Hooba references, some poor and incomplete/unconnected sales systems. Quite why they would start forcing migration during sales calls when they can't then  sell to them is anyone's guess but that is what they have done. Their organisation has a lot of good people in it but it's so poorly structured and supported (systems/comms/training) that it's a nightmare to deal with. Its a shame because BT has always worked for us. 

When I rang up about Boost a month ago I was told that 'Now' had let them have Sky Plus but not 4k and they didn't know when they would be getting it. Strangely they started to suggest selling me Sky stream but not integrated within EE - just acting as a sales channel and money collector is what it sounded like. I am not sure who is in charge of their product development but I would think they need an upgrade. 

I will have to speak to EE I guess. Have to build up my resilience before I sit on hold all day again. 🙂

[hooba]

For reasons best known to BT they want all consumers to move over to EE, with BT being business focused only. I mean, fair enough - if that's what they want to do that's up to them. But to embark on this (probably massive) exercise whilst failing to have the appropriate ordering systems in place at EE is really very poor.  My best guess is that the plan was for everything to be in place and working before starting this migration process - but it's all been horribly delayed. Rather than postpone they've decided to go ahead anyway, so it's the customers that will have to taste the pain. I'm pretty grumpy about it too.

All of that said ... if things ever went wrong with BT systems ... then God help you. My BT account was a mess for years and years stemming from a house move back in 2015, and I don't think it was ever fully resolved. Back in 2015 I ended up with Executive Complaints and was assigned a dedicated handler - all this because it took them 6 weeks to transfer my broadband from one address to another. I think I'm saying: they've always been awful whenever something goes wrong. I only hope the new system, whenever it gets built, is a bit more flexible than the old one. But I'm not really expecting it to be. At this point they've failed to so far deliver even basic functionality.

[Midnight_Voice]

@hooba 

I see we are dickering about ‘technical’ - I think that your Box Pro not being able to do UltraBoost is a technical limitation, because it can’t do it, and you think it isn’t because it could do it. So semantics - but I still think that something that needs software changes before it will work is technically limited; and it contradicts your point about the ordering system - they could get that right tomorrow, and we’d still be waiting for the software changes on the Boxes before we could use it. Indeed, in effect, that’s where you are now, as being direct with Now bypasses the ordering system.

But you are still looking at a Box Pro that can’t do UltraBoost for you, and as you say, its Now app needs an update.

I also suspect the EETV software needs an update to get the Now channels in the EPG with UltraBoost, probably even on their Apple TV box still.

By the way, your experience with Now direct with UltraBoost  on the Box Pro differs from mine; it didn’t recognise any enhancement, certainly not to HD. But I can’t check it again now.

[hooba]

@Midnight_Voice  It's not semantics. The channels just need to be added to the EPG. But before they do that they need to let people actually order the service. It's only semantics if you think adding channels to the EPG is a 'technical' challenge that needs to be overcome. If you do think that, then fair enough. Agree to disagree.

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@DarrenDev wrote:

@SwannyD2 the software update isn't for the multicast channels - they're all the same as normal.  The fix is for the Now TV app to work correctly, and it's between Sky and YouView directly - we don't have access to see the details.

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[MartinH416]

Agree re your comments - I did also have 2 IDs at BT to get around their sales system glitches. I find it remarkable that companies the size of BT/EE are still operating (and building it seems with EE) retail systems that are built around products rather than customers. With staff and customers trying to navigate through that it is no wonder it is so painful and must cost them a fortune. 

To bring it back more specifically to the 4k content support within the EE offering - my experience during this move is that a large number of those I interacted with did not understand or were not capable of communicating what would actually be available to a customer and how they could or could not use it in practice. i.e. watching in HD on a 4k capable device should not be communicated as 4k. Quoting Now TV as offering 4k content when EE don't sell/support Ultra Boost is not the appropriate answer to the question when addressed to an EE rep (who I have grown to feel sorry for the longer this has gone on). 

My immediate issue is in the current situation - 

how can I watch 4k sky sports and 4k series/movie content within the EETV framework (I have the EETV pro, Apple TV and Fire TV cube/Max sticks available)

As it sounds, the only way to do that would be to subscribe to Ultra Boost (Now) so

- when is EE going to offer Ultra Boost

- and if not what does EE suggest as the best way forward

- or do I just close the whole lot down (BB/Mob and content and go elsewhere).

the irony here is that as I type this an advert for TNT Ultimate pops up on the TV showing how good 4k can look on the existing pro kit (I am on the Ultimate channel which is the only one I have ever seen 4k content on EE so far, that and Discovery plus app).