PIRATE DRAMA: John Malkovich stars as Blackbeard in Crossbones, which was scripted in Wellington and is one of the shows Sky hopes will win over viewers to Neon.

The wraps should come off Sky Television's Neon internet television service within hours, but it won't provide a cheap way for people to watch the latest series of Game of Thrones.

Sky spokeswoman Kirsty Way had expected at noon that people would be able to start signing up to Neon later today and was confident the service would at least be live tomorrow.

While it offers several "exclusives", Neon is missing some content from United States studio HBO, whose material is the backbone of its premium SoHo entertainment channel.

Subscribers will be able to watch the first three series of Game of Thrones, but not series four which Sky TV first screened on SoHo last year. Series five is due to debut in April, but it is understood it won't be available on Neon in the near term.

Product manager Sarah Pritchett said Sky aimed to offer more HBO content on Neon in future.

The lack of some fresh content from HBO is the second disappointment for some television fans after Sky admitted last week that Neon would only offer programmes in standard definition until about mid-year, when it hopes to support HD.

Sky is offering a 30-day free trial for the service, which will normally cost $20 a month. Vodafone will provide customers with Neon for free for six months, and at half price for the following six months, if they sign up to one of its uncapped broadband plans, which are priced from $99.

It will not be possible to take up its unlimited plans without the offer, according to terms and conditions on Vodafone's website, meaning the $10 charge during the second six months will not be optional, even if customers don't want Neon.

People will be able to watch Neon on computers, iPhone, iPads and wirelessly on televisions that support Apple Airplay but not on Android smartphones or tablets at launch. Support for Android and Microsoft's XBox was in the wings, Way said.

"Exclusives" on Neon include:

Pirate drama Crossbones, starring John Malkovich as Blackbeard. Crossbones is written by Wellington-based author and script-writer Neil Cross

Netflix' produced gangster series Lilyhammer

Historical drama Washington Spies, starring Billy Elliot

Gracepoint, a US version of Broadchurch, with a different plotline, featuring Doctor Who actor David Tennant

Other shows include about 1000 movies, all seasons of the Sopranos and True Blood, season one of Girls and Looking and the first two season of The Bridge, a remake of a Scandinavian show about a serial killer working on the US-Mexican border.

Neon had been designed so subscribers were never more than two clicks away from playing a piece of content, Pritchett said. Visitors would be able to see the whole catalogue of what was on offer before signing up.

Subscribers will able to stop watching shows part-way through and then pick them up from the same point when they logged in later.

A "watchlist feature" central to the site will keep tabs on programmes that subscribers had recently viewed, were watching and shows they had earmarked as interesting.

Pritchett hoped Neon would in future be able to provide separate watchlists for different family members subscribed to same account. "We don't have that for launch; it's a tricky piece of engineering, but it is something we have on the roadmap."

Telecommunications company CallPlus said it had seen customers make less use of peer-to-peer file sharing services at the same time that the uptake of paid streaming services had increased.

Taryn Hamilton, general manager of CallPlus' Slingshot internet service, said that indicated its move to make it easier for customers to sign up to the United States version of Netflix through a service called Global Mode, in breach of Netflix' terms and conditions, had resulted in lower piracy.

"Our statistics show that BitTorrent traffic is dropping at the same rate that paid streaming is increasing," he said.