TV problems - DH's attitude

I do that, but yesterday as I sat to watch TV I thought about my parents and how it complicated it would be for them.

I would be furious with him.. get a tele for another room where you can watch what you like when you like. Or move him to another room with another tv.

Well... I suggest that you stop paying half the subscriptions as your selfish husband does not give you access to it. Spend the money on a TV for yourself in another room and leave this stupid oaf to his solitary football and sport watching.

Lots of misandry on this thread, kind of disappointing.

Never mind new TVs & new zappers, tell him you want a new husband because this one's not working properly! For goodness sake, why are you paying for a tv he won't share properly?!!!

No, he is being ridiculously unreasonable and if you pay for now tv it comes up as an option on the sky menu so you can view everything on there , so he is wrong about that and unreasonable , Sky own NOW tv

Please get your own TV. I did so, which sorted, who is going to watch what and when.

Aaaaaand......... I've ordered it!!!

Thank you so much to all those who have commented and helped me make up my mind. StatenIsland, I now know a million times more about Smart TVs and thingummy sticks than I did yesterday!

I've spoken to TalkTalk and we have the most up to date box, so updating that won't do anything to the picture quality. They weren't terribly helpful, to be honest. However, I've been investigating the Now stick and that seems to me to be the obvious work-around to the problem. Coincidentally, it's my DH's birthday at the end of this month, so guess what I'll be buying him?! If it all goes pear-shaped and doesn't work, I'll insist he buys a new TV for the living room and takes the old one to the spare bedroom to watch his b****y football! Watch this space.......

If he wants sport, just suggest he gets Sky with Sky sport and pays for it. One controller as TV will go through the Sky box.

Our son and DIL have a Now tv box if that helps, they are quite inexpensive.

I too want this to work for you and think in the light of the above you should get a stick. If Now do a stick, great, that seems to be the obvious solution.

Switching to HDMI when you need it is easy-peasy (my daughter has a fire stick and we have a roku - both are easy) and it means everything else can be HD.

Please come back and let us know how you get on!

Good luck!

Trisha, I had an online chat with someone at AO about something else and took the opportunity to ask about your Philips set: Their answer:

NOW TV is only available on Samsungs, LGs and Android TVs - so this Philips 50PUS7085/12 does not have it. It typically comes predownloaded on LGs, on Samsung & Android TV you can download it through the app store.

In other words, if you were buying NOW services before you bought the TV, you chose the wrong TV brand. Smart TVs are wonderful pieces of kit but buying one can be a bit of a minefield because of this issue with licensing third party apps.

If you find you can’t tweak up the picture quality through Settings (as well as the sound which you said you’d done) it does sound frustrating to have bought a set which has features you can’t take advantage of because of this workaround.

See what you can achieve with a chat to Talk Talk (maybe a newer box as discussed in the link I posted earlier). Also have a chat with someone at NOW to see what they suggest. Amazon link to Smart Stick options here:

www.tinyurl.com/34m99w2n

That may be the best solution as a NOW Smart Stick will plug into an HDMI port leaving you free to watch your favourite programmes on the free-to air-channels at the best possible quality via the Smart remote's Source ->TV option. All you’d have to do then is tab from TV to HDMI 1, HDMI 2, HDMI 3 when you want to watch via another device.

I see from the set data on AO that yours has three HDMI ports so you could have one for the Smart Stick, one for the Talk Talk Box for recording and a third if you have a separate DVD player or other device. This configuration may mean you having to use different remotes for different devices but it’s a small inconvenience in exchange for optimum picture quality.

This is long, but as Fanny Cornforth said, some of us are very invested in this issue and I’d really like you to see you getting the hang of how all this could work, if that makes sense.

Streuth! I remember televisions with 405 lines and the marvel that was 625 lines with the advent of BBC2! We have come a long way!

Trisha. Laughing lots at the remote shaped like an iron comment?. Brilliant. We got a new smaller smart tv for me so he could watch car programmes on his huge tv in the lounge. He spent 2 hours trying to set it up and decided it was broken. I waited til he was out and got it set up in half an hour. He’s really miffed now though because my tv has lots more channels. Poor love ????

Sorry oldudders rabid football female here married to a man of the same ilk! He has other interests too....??

Thank you StatenIsland. Fanny will update soon - DGS has just arrived from school!

Trisha please update us!
Some of us are very invested in your TV / DH woes!

Trisha57

Ah, it appears that NowTV app is not compatible with our TV. We have a Phillips 50PUS7085/12. Apparently it affects Sony TVs as well. Maybe a Now TV stick? StatenIsland?

Ah ha. The plot thickens while the issue becomes clearer. This TT community thread might throw some light:

community.talktalk.co.uk/t5/TV/Now-tv-app-incompatible-with-my-box/td-p/2737673

Maybe a chat with someone at Talk Talk to see how best to integrate the devices, still let you record programmes on the TT hard drive while still getting the best out of your Smart TV. A stick might be the answer rather than watching live TV and streaming through what might be an outdated box.

Thankyou Trisha. I grew up in a household where my father and my twin younger brothers talked of little else. Yawn!

Sounds very very complicated to me Trisha, I wouldn’t be happy with that arrangement at all, so I don’t think you are being unreasonable, I actually think your Dh is

olddudders, to be fair I did know that he was a football fanatic when I married him nearly 41 years ago! But I completely agree with your description of the game

Football, the opiate of the people, is a game played by 22 overpaid prima-donna yobs, in front - pre-Covid - of a stadium full of wannabes and a nation of rabid males monopolising the sofa and the tv remote.

Look for a man with alternative interests. We do exist.

I think my main complaint isn't that he won't let me watch what I want (I do, including Call the Midwife and Sewing Bee!) it's that because the Now TV app can't be installed on our TV directly, we have to have an inferior picture for ALL the channels (I've fixed the sound problem). The point of getting a new TV was that a) it could be mounted on the wall, as our old TV was very old and heavy, b) one remote would control all our viewing and c) the quality would be better. It's on the wall now, but that's the only improvement.

Trisha57
This would be far too 'one sided' for my liking
The only way out of this is that you have your own TV in another room. Get a technician to set it up for you .
Both H and self had our own tv
Different rooms, obviously.as we could never agree what to watch

I think I get it now (she says hopefully). We have a TalkTalk box with its own remote AND a remote for the TV. As the TV is not compatible with Now TV, DH gets all our viewing via the TalkTalk box and not the TV, which means that the super HD function on the TV is not being used (I think its called 4k HD or something like that). Would a Now TV stick work, so that we could just use the TV set up and not the TalkTalk box?