NOW TV: New Smart Box brings Freeview, Sky Cinema and more on a monthly basis

You can now get broadband and phone calls alongside your internet TV

The new Now TV box, alongside its remote (Now TV)

Compare broadband providers and find the best deal for you with our Best Broadband Deals page.

NOW TV has revealed its next set-top box and a bundle of phone calls, broadband and TV packages which can be combined in lots of different ways. Even so, the company was eager to maintain its key feature: no long-term contracts.

Since the first box launched for £10 in 2012, NOW TV has offered access to Sky content without the need for a satellite dish or lengthy contract.

Customers instead subscribe for a month at a time to bundles of channels such as Entertainment, Sky Cinema and Sky Sports, each costing between £6.99 and £33.99 for a month. If you aren’t going to need access to the bundle next month, you can cancel at any time and re-subscribe when you’re ready.

This flexibility is crucial to the new bundles, though now they come with the option to include broadband at three different speeds: up to 17 Mbps for £8 a month, up to 38 Mbps (£18 a month) and up to 76 Mbps (£26 a month).

There’s a discount for buying broadband in conjunction with a TV package. For instance, the Entertainment Month Pass (£6.99) plus the up to 17Mbps broadband package called Brilliant Broadband (£8), when bought together cost just £9.99.

You also have to factor in a £17.99 a month line rental and additionally you can choose a phone package that’s pay-as-you-use or includes calls.

All of which is considerably more complicated than previous versions but at least still has the facility that you can cancel at any time.

All the new bundles come with a new machine, the NOW TV Smart Box. Some were expecting this new box to be compatible with the latest UHD (or 4K) broadcasts, but it’s not. This is a Full HD box but the HDMI socket is not compatible with 4K. That’s a shame but as 4K content is so rare just now, it may not be an issue for many.

The box is free if you sign up to one of the NOW TV Combo bundles, or £39.99 if you buy it on its own – if you have broadband already, for instance. It comes with a NOW TV router if you sign up to one of the broadband packages. There’s a £40 (broadband) or £50 (fibre) one-off set-up charge. You can avoid this set-up fee if you instead sign up to a Saver option though this requires a 12-month minimum subscription so loses the flexibility the other Combo bundles offer.

The new box also includes the ability to pause live TV as well as the programmes you’re streaming, though it’s not a fully-fledged Personal Video Recorder with a hefty hard drive.

And unlike earlier NOW TV boxes, you can access more than 60 Freeview channels with this one, though you’ll need to plug a regular TV aerial in for these.

There’s an attractive interface that’s easy to follow and, after brief tests today, straightforward to use.

The box is slightly bigger than previous models, but looks slicker and is still far from big. The addition of Freeview channels now means you don't have to switch to another TV source when turning from NOW TV’s apps or channels to regular Freeview ones, which is handy.

Sky’s content is one of the key features of NOW TV’s boxes – the earlier box which lacks Freeview TV access is still available alongside the new one – and these include channels such as Sky Atlantic and Sky 1 in the Entertainment Pass package. Sky Cinema Month Pass offers access to over 1,000 movies on demand including a new premiere (that is, new to the service) every day. And Sky Sports offers all seven Sky Sports channels. There’s also a NOW TV Kids Pass with six dedicated children’s channels.

The new box, available in early July, offers more content than NOW TV has had before and with the same flexibility and convenience as before. Some will find the range of options more complex than before but the Smart Box is certainly an attractive, capable and versatile gadget.