Dabbling with the Dark Side: Now TV and Game of Thrones update

I have had my wee Now TV box and Entertainment subscription for two months now and I’m pleased to report it has been pretty much faultless for watching Game of Thrones season five, albeit through the Catch Up service rather than live viewing on the Sky Atlantic channel. Not a single instance of picture break up and the 720p picture quality has been extremely good. The Sky Atlantic fan show Thronecast has proven a hit with my family, too, but we’ve found little else on the channel (or ITV Encore, the other Sky exclusive, come to that) that justify keeping the Entertainment sub running after GoT has finished in a few weeks. I will cancel it in June (unless he reviews for the second season of True Detective suggest it's as good as the first).

One blip was with the final episodes of Mad Men when there has been a notable drop in PQ for a few minutes on a couple of occasions during episodes. But again, no break-ups to report and the service has been solid.

Netflix website to undergo major redesign

And hopefully the TiVo app will follow. 

Netflix confirms that it will roll out a new user interface on the web to all users worldwide beginning in June.  The most notable aspect to the new design is that it eliminates the slower, scrolling carousels for content discovery in favour of an updated look with larger thumbnails in each section which can be clicked on in order to expand a detail screen showing additional information about the title in question.

More details on the redesign can be found on TechCrunch.

Sky Arts 2 HD to close June 9th

Sky is to merge its two HD (and SD) arts channels and close Sky Arts 2 HD, from June 9th.
It is the latest channel to be axed by Sky after the company announced this week that it plans to turn Sky 3D into an on-demand service (that will kill home 3D stone dead, I'm sure). Virgin never carried the 3D channel, but the loss of the HD channel leaves us one down and I'm not aware of anything new arriving.