Phil Wilkinson-Jones October 23rd, 2023
NOW TV is one of the biggest and most popular streaming services around – and with good reason. Not only does it offer thousands of movies and box sets on demand, subscribers get access to live Sky channels without being tied into a lengthy contract.
There are five NOW TV memberships to choose from and while it would be expensive to sign up to all of them, individually they each offer pretty good value for money. In this guide we’ll look at the channels included with each NOW TV Membership as well as the sort of on demand content you can expect to see.
The NOW TV Entertainment Membership features some of the most popular Sky channels as well as an absolute tonne of TV box sets including some of the biggest TV hits of recent years – we’re talking about the likes of House of the Dragon, Chernobyl and Succession. Let’s take a look at the channels on offer.
The Sky Sports Membership gives you access to 11 Sky Sports channels. There are no box sets to be found here but the channels, when not showing live events, have a good range of documentaries, classic clips and big-name interviews.
With hundreds of Premier League games shown live every season, this is still the place to watch English football’s top flight, despite the emergence of BT Sport.
Sky Sports’ second football channel focuses on live coverage of international football, the EFL, League Cup, Scottish football and European leagues.
The big draw here is that Sky have the rights to England’s Test matches, but there’s also coverage of T20 competitions, the County Championship and more.
The only channel on which to watch live coverage of every race of the F1 season (the British Grand Prix is also shown on Channel 4 for free). All practice and qualifying sessions are also shown live. Read more about Sky Sports F1.
Featuring live coverage of events including the European and PGA tour, the Masters, Open, US Open, PGA Championship and the Ryder Cup.
This horse racing channel, formerly known as At The Races, features daily tips for those who like a bet, live results, racecards, interviews and more.
Sky Sports Action features live coverage of NBA, Rugby Union & League, Darts, badminton, NFL and more.
Features the big events from the dedicated sports channels in one place and serves as an additional place for live content when there are, for example, two Premier League games being shown live simultaneously.
As the name suggests, there’s a bit of everything on here. Includes a lot of the sports that don’t have a dedicated channel like Rugby Union, Rugby League, swimming, basketball and tennis.
Another channel showing a mix of sports, including darts, superbikes and boxing.
Headlines and breaking news from the world of sport. The channel’s coverage of football’s transfer deadline day is always popular, as is Soccer Saturday as Jeff Stelling keeps you up to date with all the latest scores.
The Sky Cinema Membership gives you access to 11 live channels and also includes thousands of movies available to watch on demand. Here’s the full list of channels – we won’t attempt to go into detail describing them because the names speak for themselves.
The names are correct at the time of writing. Sometimes Sky either changes one of these names or adds an additional channel to celebrate a holiday, a particular film franchise or a new release. Recently there has been Sky Cinema Christmas, Sky Cinema Harry Potter and Sky Cinema Star Wars.
Sky no longer sells a separate Kids Membership option. Instead the kids channels have been rolled into the NOW TV Entertainment pass. This seems generous, but is likely a result of lack of interest in a standalone kids pack on NOW TV.
There are no live channels included with the NOW TV Hayu Membership but it does give you access to the latest episodes of top US reality TV shows like Keeping Up With The Kardashians, Million Dollar Listing New York, Backyard Envy and Get A Room with Carson & Thom. There are more than 5,000 episodes available altogether so you can binge watch to your heart’s content.
The Entertainment, Sky Cinema, and hayu membership all last for a month and then automatically renew, but can be cancelled at any time. The Sky Sports membership can be bought either as a monthly membership or a day membership that lasts 24 hours and costs a one-off fee.
Yes, in most cases NOW TV is a cheaper way of watching Sky channels than by signing up to Sky TV, although you miss out on all the other benefits that come with having a Sky Q set top box or subscribing to Sky Stream.
No, in order to watch any live channels on NOW TV you’ll need to subscribe to one of the memberships we’ve outlined above. If you have a NOW TV set top box or stick, you will be able to access subscription-free apps such as BBC iPlayer and All4, although you do need a TV licence to watch anything on the iPlayer.
You can watch NOW on over 60 different devices, including a smart TV, laptop, tablet or phone. You can stream NOW content on newer Smart TVs, Amazon Fire, Apple TV, Google Chromecast and most newer gaming consoles. You can also access the NOW TV app via a TalkTalk or BT TV Pro box.
Yes, you can have a free seven-day trial of the Entertainment, Sky Cinema, Kids or hayu membership. The memberships then renew automatically unless you cancel. There’s no free trial available for the Sky Sports membership.