You may have seen this advertised interminably on Pick TV, if, like me, you’ve been watching the re-runs of Futurama and/or Stargate Atlantis etc.

NowTV is Sky’s version of internet TV, offering a way of getting Sky content without a long-term contract or satellite dish or Sky+ box. The current introductory price for a NowTV Entertainment Month Pass is £4.99.

You can buy the pass and watch on a tablet or laptop, and you can also purchase (for just under a tenner) the NowTV Box, which is smaller, even, than the Apple TV box. It connects to an HDMI port on your TV, and your wireless network.

I’ve been wanting to sample Game of Thrones, among some other things. Pick have shown a few GoT episodes. I thought it looked all right, and at least had some interesting female characters. But I wasn’t interested enough to spend £55 on a Blu-Ray boxed set. Neither was I interested enough to pay £1.80 something per episode on Amazon’s streaming video service.

It occurred to me that with the current offer, NowTV is probably the cheapest way to watch GoT without committing yourself too much. For £35, I bought the box and a 6-month pass, which should give me plenty of time to plough through it. As others have pointed out, the box is a bargain, as it ships with an HDMI cable, which would cost you close to a tenner, or even more, if you were foolish enough to buy one at high street prices.

It arrived promptly, and was dead easy to set up. I must say, shipping the thing with the HDMI cable in the box takes a lot of hassle out of the situation. Sure, it’s a bit of a pain entering passwords and user names using the arrows on a remote control, but it was glitch free. Once up and running, it’s extremely efficient, getting to the Home screen and loading content much more quickly than any other internet content through my Sony TV and Blu-Ray.

Video quality may be an issue for some. I’ve read reviews that the live sport streams (paid for separately, a much more expensively) are a bit ropey. For me, 720p content is absolutely fine. You have to remember that most of the content being broadcast on Freeview is Standard Definition anyway. Most of the stuff I’ve got sitting on my shelves is SD (on DVD), and so 720p is already better. Anyway, if GoT was to be shown on Pick (or Five, if Sky/Discovery end up buying it), it would be shown in SD.

I’m inclined to only work with 720p on my own account, and I’ve always wondered why people are obsessed with 1080p, which only hogs more bandwidth and disc space than it really needs to. How clearly do you want to be able to see peoples’ chicken pox scars, anyway?

As to the service itself, be aware that only some Sky content is available from the beginning. Game of Thrones can be watched from the beginning of Season 1, but The Blacklist, which also interests me, perhaps because it’s still being broadcast, is only available on a Catch-up basis, which means, the most recent few episodes. I guess it depends whether Sky own the repeat rights, or something. With GoT, I would guess its availability is a sign that it won’t be available on a Freeview channel any time soon. Whereas The Blacklist? Maybe it will turn up on Four or Five at some point? Who knows. Anyway, I’ll watch what I can, and in six months I’ll decide whether to cancel the pass before paying for any more content.

(As well as Sky content, you can access iPlayer, 4oD, Demand Five, and other channels, including Vevo music videos.)

You have the option of buying passes for Movies and Sport, but (as indicated above), these cost more. I’ve got very little interest in either.