Google Cardboard lets you travel to far-off places and watch videos in virtual reality, but what if you just want to sit back and browse the web? Soon, you’ll be able to do that as well.
We've compiled a 'Top 10' list of the best iOS apps to hit the App Store in the month of June 2016. The apps mentioned in this video include POTO, _PRISM, Hyperburner, Draw Calendar, The Infatuation, VUE, Tablet Hotels, Perchang, Adventure Company, and Moments. Which app is your favorite?
Remember Facebook Paper, an app released by Facebook in January 2014 that gave users a new way to use FB? If not, well, that’s probably for the best, because it’s now been discontinued.
Update: Now TV has just received a significant overhaul. As well as adding a no-contract triple-play bundle which should act as a good budget alternative to Sky Q, Sky has also released a new Now TV Smart Box which includes a Freeview tuner.
This means that in addition to being able to stream Now TV's existing line-up, the Now TV Smart Box will also allow access to Freeview's 60 free-to-air channels, meaning it could just be the only box you need to plug into your TV.
Original article below:
Now TV is a non-contract Video on Demand service powered by Sky TV and was initially launched in the summer of 2013. It's Sky's big push to counteract the might of VOD giants Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video, and the broadcaster has big plans for the service.
Aimed at those that (for whatever reason) don't want to be shackled to a premium Pay TV contract, it offers a low-cost way to consume Sky's exclusive sports content, stream movies from its sundry film channels and keep up to date with some of the best entertainment telly around.
Unlike its on-demand rivals, Now TV is available in three entirely separate ways. There are sport, movie and TV content strands, plus live channel streams.
There is such an abundance of content, keep checking back to this review to see if anything has changed before you buy. As always we will keep it updated so you can make an informed buying choice.
So is Now TV right for you? And if so, what's the best way to watch it? Read on to find out...
Check out the rivals...
Now TV offers timed chunks culled from Sky's various subscription channels. For many the biggest lure will be the movie package. Unlike Sky's satellite-delivered platform, Now TV is a dip-in/leave whenever proposition, useful when you've blazed through everything of interest.
New subscribers get a 30-day free trial for the movie service, which then migrates to a monthly fee. This auto renews, but you can cut the chord at any time, without penalty.
Once the 30-day free trial is up then the price for content differs depending on what you want. If it's the Entertainment Pass you are after, then it will be £6.99 a month. The movie pass is more expensive at £9.99.
And then there is the super-expensive Sports Pass. This is split into three variants: a £6.99 Day Pass, a £10.99 Week Pass and a mammoth £31.99 Month Pass.
Splitting the service into these three strands is a good idea, as long as you know what you want to watch. And that is both the beauty of this service and the frustrating side. Play it right and you can pay for the Entertainment Pass when all the big-ticket shows are on. Play it wrong and you could be paying for a month of content you don't really want.
The same goes for movies. Time your buy-in correctly and you can take big advantage of the broadcaster's comprehensive Hollywood deals, goggleboxing everything from Guardians of the Galaxy to The Grand Budapest Hotel.
Films here inevitably appear before they land on rival services such as Netflix and Amazon, and shortly after the DVD/Blu-ray release window.
Content for movies is themed by genre: Disney, All-Time Greats, Action, Comedy, Family, Crime and Thriller, Sci-Fi, Horror, Drama, Romance, Indie and Classics. Now TV also curates special Collections, such as Monsters, War and Christmas (when it's that time of the year), and also gets actors and actresses to curate lists of their best movies.
As explained above, the monthly entertainment pass is £6.99. This is up from £4.99 when it was first announced. Where it used to be the cheapest on-demand premium service announced it is now aligned price-wise with its rivals.
The service offers recent transmissions of some of Sky's biggest shows, including The Blacklist, Fortitude and Modern Family.
There's also a healthy selection of boxsets to gorge on. These include (but this is one of the most variable parts of the service) Game Of Thrones, Penny Dreadful and Mad Men. This list is ever-changing though, depending on things that fall out of season. So it is always worth checking the Now TV website to see if anything takes your fancy from month to month.
While you can watch live streams of select channels, not all programming appears, due to rights limitations. Similarly, boxset availability will churn.
Sky has made 13 of its channels available through Now TV. These are: Sky Atlantic, Sky One, Fox, Gold, Sky Living. Comedy Central, Discovery Channel, MTV, ITV, Nickelodeon, Nickelodeon Jnr, ABC and Sky Arts.
Typically users have two ways to catch hot shows, either as they're broadcast or from the On Demand library; featured programmes tend to appear within 24 hours of transmission.
One of the frustrating things about the Now TV service is just how quickly its content disappears from the service. This is especially the case for shows on Sky Atlantic and must be because of the deal Sky has with HBO.
To Sky's credit it does have a Leaving Soon section, but if you miss an episode of, say, The Leftovers then the maximum you would have to catch up is two weeks. After that episode one would disappear, then the other in that sort of regularity.
This means that either you watch these shows like clockwork week on week, or that you binge watch in a rather short space of time. Each episode is given a day countdown, so at least Sky is trying to make viewers aware of when things will disappear.
Unlike its sibling services, Now TV's Sky Pass is either payable daily, weekly or monthly. Whichever pass you use they allow you to view all seven Sky Sports channels for the allotted time you have paid for.
There's no denying that sports is expensive through the Now TV service but the idea it is an event purchase, not necessarily a daily one. And Sky is hoping that the fee is split between a group of people watching a big match.
The ticket price is good value if you're not looking for a long term sporting commitment. Get some mates around, combine resources, and off you go. There's plenty to choose from, including the Premier League, UEFA Champions league, rugby fixtures, coverage of international test cricket and live coverage of the European and US PGA Tours.
If you would rather just a daily update of sports news, then you can also watch Sky Sports News HQ through the app on the Sky Now TV box - this app is unlocked with any Pass, not just a sports one.
The number of platforms offering Now TV continues to grow. The service is currently available on: Chromecast, PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Roku, LG Smart TVs, PC or Mac, plus apps for iOS and Android (4.0 and above) apps for both mobile and tablet.
Alternatively you can buy the dedicated Now TV box. Available directly from the Now TV website, there are a number of packages you can choose from (as we have outlined above) and you even get an HDMI cable bundled. The Now TV box is both a dedicated portal to Sky's own services, as well as host to a range of third-party streaming content, including BBC iPlayer.
Now TV doesn't promote itself as a high-definition service, instead using adaptive bitrate streaming to cope with different broadband speeds. A fast broadband connection will reward with very acceptable image quality. Viewed via a VirginMedia fibre connection, we found the service consistently delivered image quality comparable to DVD.
Navigating the user interface is reasonably quick and intuitive. There are usability caveats though. Buffering can be an issue, and when a big show like Game of thrones hits, the Now TV servers have experienced outages.
Arguably the best way to view Now TV is via the dedicated Now TV box which upscales content to 720p.
The Now TV service is a fantastic one when it works well and you can navigate your way through the myriad ways to watch the content.
For some, particularly those without a Smart TV or games console, then the Now TV Box is a super cheap device that's an essential purchase. Even if you don't buy into Sky's content then you will have iPlayer, 4OD and other to use as freely as you wish.
For others then the app is the way to go. The problem with this is that quality is changeable, and it is not necessarily the fault with Sky's own app. For instance, on the PS4 the app stuttered for us, but worked perfectly when used on the Sky TV Box.
The mobile versions of the app are buggier than the TV apps, though I didn't find much wrong with watching Now TV on iOS. It was on Android that I started to have intermittent sound issues and apps crashing.
On the whole, the app and the service worked well and you simply can't fault the content that is available through the service.
The content available through Now TV is superb. Movies are much closer to Blu-ray releases than Netflix can muster up and having HBO content one stream away, via the Sky Atlantic channel, is impressive.
The sheer amount of places you can watch Now TV is impressive as well. Having tried out the service on the PS3, PS4, Now TV Box and YouView, it's great to see the UI the same across the board.
Also, the ability to watch on two devices at the same time frees up the service no end.
It's also a great-value way to access Sky without having to strap a dish to your home or sign your life away on an 18-month contract.
You can only register on four devices. This may only be a problem for a technology reviewer but with the many places you can watch the service, this feels like a number than needs to be upped.
Quality is also currently capped at 720p, which will irk the Full HD crowd. You will need a strong-ish internet connection as well - otherwise you will face buffering issues.
The quality of streams does seem to vary from app to app as well. Although, having used this service for over a year now, I have seen a marked improvement in the adaptive bitrate that is being used by Sky.
Now TV has evolved into a compelling alternative to the all-you-can-eat buffet offered by Netflix and Amazon, and the straight PPV of Blinkbox and its ilk. If you're interested in making a specific Sports grab, or simply want to catch up with some trending TV, it has much to offer.
While there are some performance niggles, those on the right end of a fast broadband connection should be able to watch a pleasingly smooth stream. Overall value for money is high.
Update: Now TV has just received a significant overhaul. As well as adding a no-contract triple-play bundle which should act as a good budget alternative to Sky Q, Sky has also released a new Now TV Smart Box which includes a Freeview tuner.
This means that in addition to being able to stream Now TV's existing line-up, the Now TV Smart Box will also allow access to Freeview's 60 free-to-air channels, meaning it could just be the only box you need to plug into your TV.
Importantly this new box will not replace the existing Now TV box, but will sit alongside it as a premium £40 option.
Original article below:
The NOW TV box has had an update this year, giving it a bit of a facelift, some new innards and improved connectivity. But given the stiff competition from the likes of Amazon and Netflix on the content side, and Fire TV, Apple TV and SHIELD on the hardware side, is there still a place for Sky's little media maestro?
Outside of the murky mobile phone world, contracts are becoming a bit of sticking point for the consumer. With Netflix pioneering the way for non-contract on-demand services, and the likes of Disney now following suit, Sky has found another way to get the contract-phobic signed into its ecosystem.
Check out the rival services...
The NOW TV service offers practically no-strings access to Sky content for an incredibly reasonable price. And in a pretty darned simple way too. The NOW TV box echoes that, delivering simple, cheap hardware that will instantly make your dumb telly just that little bit smarter.
There are other ways to get the NOW TV service into your home – some smart TVs, like LG's, carry the app, and you can also access it via a tablet or mobile and Chromecast it onto your screen. But for that plug-and-play aesthetic, the £15 NOW TV box is the one to go for.
The original box was a subsidised, cut-down version of Roku's own player, and Sky has partnered up with Roku again, using what is essentially the Roku 3 box, with a few key differentiators that explain the much lower cost.
The OS has been locked down to avoid giving too much access to Sky's content-providing rivals. You won't, therefore, be seeing Netflix on a vanilla NOW TV box, although as the underlying hardware's still the same I doubt it would be a particularly tricky thing to change with a little light hackery…
And while there are USB and microSD slots, on the side and rear respectively, you won't actually be able to do anything with them on the standard NOW TV box – I guess that with such a bargain-priced box there wasn't the budget for a new housing which covered them.
But there are new hardware goodies compared with the original NOW TV box, the main one being a hard-wired ethernet connection, enabling you to plug the box directly into your home network.
The original box relied upon the vagaries of Wi-Fi for its connection, but the ethernet port should put paid to any stuttering, buffering performance from the box. There is still a Wi-Fi connection, however, of the 802.11ac variety, which should also help alleviate any wireless woes.
The improved internal components of the NOW TV box also enable you to stream purchased content up to 1080p, over the HDMI connection – that's a welcome improvement over the 720p limit of the original.
The remote is pretty much identical – but the simple little device doesn't really need more than the direct NOW TV or Sky Store buttons.
Content really is the name of the game for the NOW TV box. Its aim is to get Sky into as many homes as possible, and this versatile wee thing gives you myriad options for doing so.
The first is the bundle. When you pick up a box you can add another tenner onto the price of the box – pushing it up to £24.99 – and choose one of the three basic content packs to accompany the hardware.
There's the Movie pack, the Entertainment pack and the Sports pack. With the £24.99 bundle you get two days of sports (big whoop), two months of movies or a full three months on the entertainment side.
Picking up subsequent passes when those run dry will cost £9.99 for a month of the movies package, and £6.99 for a month's worth of the entertainment package.
On the sporting side though things are a little more complex, and far more expensive. Considering that this is the only way, outside of a lengthy Sky TV contract, to get access to Sky's sporting crown jewels that's probably not much of a surprise.
You can pay by the day if you simply have to watch what is known in the parlance of our times as 'the big match'. That will run to £6.99 per day, but if you go for a week it's a more reasonable(ish) £10.99.
And for a month? Well, that's a pricey £31.99.
What's different about the NOW TV service compared with other streaming options is that it's not just offering on-demand or catch-up content. The movie pass does give you that, but you also get 11 Sky Movies channels, the entertainment pass gives you 13 live channels, and the sport option nets you all seven Sky Sports channels.
You can go fully on-demand and rent/buy movies from the Sky Store if you wish.
Finally, the NOW TV box will also give you access to the main catch-up services, featuring iPlayer, All 4, ITV Player and Demand 5.
Sky has opted for an app centric home screen. On the left-hand side of the screen are a number of default apps, including Now TV itself and BBC iPlayer. To add more to the home screen, I had to go into the Roku channel store.
Here there were will around 50 apps available, the pick of the bunch being: Sky Store, Sky Sports News HQ, BBC News, Demand 5, TED, Spotify, Sky News, BBC Sport, ITV Player and All 4.
Anyone familiar with Roku's lineup will know that this is an extremely cut-down version of what is available through the official channel store. Notable apps that are absent are Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video.
Although I would have loved the Now TV box to come with those sorts of options, I can understand why Sky would want to ring-fence its own box from direct rivals.
This is definitely a closed Roku box. There's no Plex on board, so media streaming isn't available through the box (although a quick Google reveals that you may be able to side-load the app) and gaming is also non-existent, but the cut-down price does reflect this.
XXXThere is an option to get rid of modifying the apps selection. To do this I pressed the Star option on the Now TV remote and found I could remove as many apps as I wanted. There is also a choice to move them around to suit preference. I could also rate content this way.
With apps on the left, on the right of the screen was a constant reminder of the content I could have.
XXXThis is the beauty of Now TV: you only pay for what section you want. So if you just want movies, that's all you pay for; if you want entertainment then you'll get those channels; if you want sport – well there are a options but this is by far the most expensive part of the package.
It's worth noting, however, that you can watch Sky Sports News HQ with any of the Now TV packs that you choose, not just the sports one. This is a good move by Sky, as the channel is an essential addition to any package for sports lovers.
Regardless of the package you have, the UI is the same. At the bottom of the screen are the following options: Sports, Movies, Entertainment, My TV Search, Help and My Account.
To make sure that Now TV isn't just seen as an on-demand platform, Sky has also added a Live section to Movies and Entertainment.
With Movies, this doesn't really make much sense – all it does is give you a list of what movies are playing on Sky at any given moment. Click into the one you want, and if you missed the beginning then tough – you have to watch it from that point. It makes much more sense to go and find that movie on-demand and watch it that way.
Live works better on the Entertainment side of things. Here you can channel-hop between Sky Living, Sky Atlantic, Sky Arts, Sky 1, MTV, Gold, Fox, Disney, Discovery, Comedy Central, Nick, Nick Jr and ITV Encore.
Again, you have to watch from whatever the live point is, but it does mean that you can watch shows such as the Simpsons on Sky 1 – something that isn't in Sky's on-demand catalogue.
Quality-wise, it all really depends on your internet connection. The Sky box can do surround sound, which is a bonus, and video quality is no longer capped at 720p – you can pick up Full HD 1080p content now as well.
I tried the box with an 8Mbps and a 100Mbps connection, and it worked great. There was very little buffering and startup was extremely quick.
One good thing is that there are no adverts to sit through – as you would expect in return for paying a premium – but you still have to put up with the Sky indents that appear throughout programmes. I didn't find them that distracting, but it's strange that these are still in place when they aren't followed by any advertising.
The new NOW TV box retains the charm and simplicity of the original, while offering some genuinely useful upgrades to the hardware.
And the NOW TV service itself is still an impressive foil to the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime Instant Video. The option for live viewing is one of the biggest feathers in its cap – although on the movie side I guess that's debatable.
Its simplicity, price and lack of contract are the other features which make NOW TV such an impressive product.
The base price is almost throwaway money, and even if you let your passes lapse for a few months over the summer you can always pick up a pass or two to while away those long, dark winter nights.
And it's smart. Not necessarily in terms of the technology, but in terms of Sky seeing a way to supplement its Sky TV customer base in the face of a contract-less, on-demand revolution.
NOW TV comes at a bargain price. The initial bundles are good value, and the one-month passes are a decent price once the first purchases run dry – apart, perhaps, from the sports programming that's so lucrative for Sky.
It's also super-simple to use. The setup and navigation are easy and enable you to get going with the minimum of fuss. I also love the fact that NOW TV gives you access to live channels, and not just on-demand content.
In terms of picture quality and stream I had no issues. Granted, I do have the luxury of a speedy city connection, but there were no dropouts.
Those sports passes are still seriously expensive, especially compared with even the movie pass – the day pass, at £6.99, is particularly brutal.
You'll also find box sets coming and going with relative regularity from the service.
I also struggled a little with the remote – sometimes it required a few jabs to get it to respond to what I was hitting.
NOW TV is still a superb service. It will give you hassle-free access to whatever Sky content you want whenever you want it, for a great price – mostly.
Sky is understandably holding back its HD content for its contract customers, or for direct purchases from the Sky Store, but given the general low price of the box and service that's not a huge issue.
If it only supported the Netflix and Amazon Video apps then we'd be hopelessly in love with it; however, we can understand why they're not available.
Given the £15 base price, and the fact you can pick up month-long free trials easily as a new user, there's almost no reason not to give NOW TV a go.
Let's make one thing clear right off the bat: Sky's Now TV Smart Box is a completely different beast from its existing Now TV Box.
As well as offering streaming services from Sky and the other major British broadcasters, it also integrates a Freeview tuner, meaning this could just be the only box you'll ever need to plug into your TV.
The Now TV Box was in essence a trojan horse for Sky's Now TV service. It was a rebranded and gated Roku box that offered a cheap way to hook up a non-internet connected TV with a streaming box carrying Sky's streaming service, in addition to a number of other apps.
But let's focus for a moment on the Now TV Smart Box's headline feature: the Freeview integration.
Open up the device's main menu and you can immediately see a thumbnail showing a live-stream of your most recently watched channel alongside Sky's other streaming content.
From there you're free to either jump across to an EPG to select which Freeview channel to watch, or you can select the thumbnail to start watching TV and jump between channels from there.
Once you're watching a live broadcast you're able to pause and rewind live TV by up to half an hour, but unfortunately there's no option to record live TV.
When I asked Damien Read, Now TV's Director of Product Marketing, about the omission he said that it was out of a desire to keep the box as affordable as possible: "We asked our customers what would you really value, especially what's affordable. This is very much that Freeview demographic."
By limiting the device's PVR functionality Sky can keep its price down by only including a single TV tuner and a limited amount of internal storage.
Also worthy of note is the fact that much of the need for recording is removed with the inclusion of streaming services. "You see the screen up there with all the catch-up down the left hand side and scroll to the right and get all the programs... catch-up with that 30 day window is starting to become the default screen" said Read.
With the majority of programmes now appearing on one catch-up service or another it could be the case that the lack of record functionality won't be a problem, but inevitably there are going to be moments where you'll wish you had the ability to record a film off BBC for example.
Moving beyond the Freeview functionality brings you to all of the streaming services offered by the device.
On the home menu each streaming service has its own row where you can either launch a dedicated app or else scroll left and right to see a curated selection of the top programs on each service.
If you choose to launch one of the dedicated apps like iPlayer then this gives you the alternative of streaming live TV over the internet.
Many people won't have a use for this functionality when live television is just a button press away, but should you live in an area with bad TV reception but good internet this could be useful for you.
Alternatively you can browse lists of programs drawn from Sky's own streaming services, which are shown depending on which of the four passes you're subscribed to.
There are two downsides to Sky's streaming implementation. First is the fact that the Smart Box is limited to 720p and doesn't support 4K or even 1080p streaming. According to Read, "picture quality [of the existing Now TV box]... is really really good and customers love it, so that wasn't an area they said [Sky] needed to improve."
From the time I spent with the device the low resolution wasn't immediately apparent, but this may have been because we were watching fairly visually boring daytime TV. When we get the device in for full review we'll be sure to put it through its paces.
The absence of 4K isn't surprising when it has so far failed to come to even Sky's premium Sky Q service, but it's a shame to see 1080p absent when it was present on the last generation of Roku devices.
The second downside is the lack of support for Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, which is a problem that's carried over from the original Now TV box.
It makes a certain amount of sense given that the two services compete directly with Sky's own, but with the Now TV Smart Box being positioned as the only device you need to have plugged into your TV this omission is a painful one.
During our interview Read mentioned that Sky has been "talking to people" about the inclusion of the service but that currently there are "no immediate plans" to do so.
To my mind this leaves any Smart Box owner with two options. Either they buy into Sky's ecosystem and rely entirely upon their Now TV subscription to watch film and TV shows (forsaking its competitors exclusives in the process), or they rely on a different device for streaming Netflix and Amazon Prime.
Given the inclusion of these two apps on just about everything, including almost all smart TVs, it's unlikely that people won't have a device capable of streaming them. Still, having to switch between inputs is a shame when the Now TV Smart Box's interface is as well designed as it is.
It's hard not to love using the Now TV Smart Box. Its interface is clean and well designed, and the way the Freeview content sits alongside the streaming content from Sky and its partners is really smartly done.
But the absence of two of the biggest streaming services from the device is likely to really harm its chances of becoming the only smart device you need to connect to your TV.
You might question whether a dedicated streaming and Freeview box is necessary in this age of Smart TVs, especially with their respective operating systems getting better and better with each passing year.
But at just £40 the Now TV Smart Box looks like it could be the most affordable and polished way of bringing your 'dumb' TV into the streaming era.
After revealing Android N as Android Nougat earlier today, Google has now spilled a bit more info about its next major mobile OS update.
After buying Beats in 2014 and turning the Beats Music streaming service into Apple Music, it’s now rumored that Apple may have its sights set on another music service.
BlackBerry CEO John Chen previously said that his company is prepping two new Android phones for release in 2016, and now details on both devices as well as a third phone have leaked out.
Dell has made some interesting Android devices as part of its Venue line, like the thin Venue 8 7000 Series (shown above) and the Venue 10 7000 Series with its cylindrical front speakers. We haven’t heard much about Dell’s Venue devices for a while, but that’s changing today, and the news isn’t good.
We've compiled a list of 10 of our favorite Android apps to hit the Google Play Store in June 2016.
Hours after Google revealed Nougat as the name of its next major Android update, details on one of the Nexus phones that’ll likely launch with Nougat in tow have leaked.
The iPhone launched as an AT&T exclusive in 2007, but it’s steadily made its way to most other carriers in the U.S., including postpaid and prepaid providers. And soon, it’ll hit another prepaid operator.
