The fight against piracy is still raging, it remains a massive problem for TV, Movies and Music around the world. One of the best weapons in the arsenal of the makers and providers of this content is convenience. The more convenient it is to access the content through the official channels the less likely it is that people will turn to piracy. Combined with affordability and you are onto a winner, hence the rise of Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, BBC iPlayer etc.

Imagine my surprise then to see Now TV, Sky’s offering in this streaming market, bottle it. They’ve screwed themselves over big time by making some rather irritating decisions that make what would be a relatively minor inconvenience into a massive one. You have a device limit of 4 (2 of which can be used concurrently) which is reasonable enough. That isn’t an issue. However, they made the decision to limit you to making only 1 change per month to your devices.

On its own that seems like a sensible business decision attempting to limit the likelihood that 1 subscription would be shared too widely by users constantly changing the devices over. It is when you combine that decision with the fact that Now TV regularly decides to stop recognising my registered devices as registered. This forces me to remove it and re-add it. It happens too often to be ignored and often to several devices at a time. Combined with the irritation of having to use Internet Explorer because Chrome and Edge don’t support Silverlight is making me consider cancelling my subscription and looking for an alternative.

Maybe that’s the idea, offer a good service with some deliberately irritating flaws to encourage people into buying a full Sky service package. Well they are out of luck. I can’t afford a Sky package. I can do without thanks to Netflix etc although I would prefer not to miss Westworld. It’s an easy fix Sky, just lift the stupid limit on changing devices. So get your fingers out.

Do you suffer from this issue? Have you been left traumatised by missing your favourite show because of it? Did it get spoiled for you by the Internet? Let me know here in the comments, on Facebook or on Twitter @adamthomas1994. Also if you know of any alternatives to Now TV that still has the likes of Sky Atlantic etc please let me know.