Other things

Controlling a Now TV box with a smartphone

In the UK, Sky, the subscription satellite television service, have an on-demand service called Now TV, it is available on most devices except Sky’s satellite receivers, most notably of these is the Now TV box, this is a Roku LT2400 (second generation) with a custom firmware.

These instructions are applicable to the Samsung Galaxy S4 and you already contol a device with it (other phones may also be capable if the correct app and infrared hardware are utilised.

  1. On your phone’s home screen, select “Apps” then open “WatchON” (Peel Smart Remote as of 2015)
  2. Select the menu (this is the 3 squares displayed at the top of the screen, for me this is on the top right)
  3. Select “Add device”
  4. Select “Streaming Media Player”
  5. You will be presented with a list of top brands, in my case these were Apple TV, Roku, Hewlett Packard, Philips and WD TV Live, in this case select “Roku”
  6. At this point ensure that your phone is on your home WiFi and that your Now TV box is set up on your home WiFi as well, the screen will show “Looking for Roku on “<your-wifi-network-name”>
  7. After a few moments you should see “Found the following Roku device(s) on “<your-wifi-network-name”> with the IP address of the Now TV box, press the green add button, this will then add the Now TV box to WatchON and you can contol it over WiFi, infrared is only used for the television if you have this set up already.
  8. You’re done, the up, down, left, right and OK buttons work, as does back and home and the play/pause button, the only buttons unavailable are the Apps, NOW TV, rewind, fast forward, and * buttons so you will need to keep the remote control for these.

If the above doesn’t work, check your phone is on WiFi, if they stop working after a while it means the Now TV IP address has changed and you should go through these steps again, as it’s done over WiFi the phone does not need a line of sight to the box to act as remote control.

Using the same above method to control a television

Handy if you want to control the Now TV box and the TV from one device, you can add your television to the WatchON/Peel Smart Remote app, it has a huge list of television makes including the popular ones, however some televisions may require you to use a brand different to the one you have, in the case of my Technika 32″ LED TV this was Blaupunkt (as it is sold under this brand as well), in the case of my Currys Essentials 15.6″ LED TV this was Australian brand Dick Smith, the process is similar to the Now TV box above but it uses the infrared hardware in the phone, you are asked to turn the TV on when you pick a brand, keep doing this until it does then press yes when the TV is turned on, this should work for pretty much all televisions out there