David Farnor | On 18, Sep 2014

NOW will raise the price of its Entertainment Membership on 16th October to £6.99 a month.

The monthly pass, which lets you stream all of Sky’s TV channels live as well as catch up on demand, has become a key VOD subscription service for UK TV viewers without Sky. The £4.99 pass carries no minimum contract, which means that cord-cutters and money-savers can watch shows such as Boardwalk Empire without locking themselves into an expensive 12-month deal.

In the past year, NOW’s Entertainment Membership has allowed UK viewers to watch Game of Thrones online legally for the very close time, while also opening up access to series such as True Blood and Penny Dreadful. It has been a bumpy ride for the service, though, with demand so high during the opening episode of Game of Thrones Season 4 that the video stream crashed repeatedly.

Indeed, this is not the first time NOW has decided to raise prices: the same hike was planned for Friday 29th May, but after poor service, Sky decided to postpone it.

“Recently we haven’t delivered the consistently high-quality service customers rightly expect from us; therefore we have decided to delay the planned price rise for the time being,” NOW said.

In recent months, though, the VOD service has taken strong steps in the right direction: they have added three new channels, including ITV Encore, Nickeloden and Nick Jr., doubled the number of episodes available on catch-up via their “Box Sets”, launched a Chromecast app, and – judging from our usage of the service – has not suffered any major downtime.

And so, from Thursday 16th October, the Entertainment Membership will increase in price from £4.99 to £6.99 a month. The increase will occur three days after the UK premiere of The Walking Dead Season 5. The show returns to FOX – one of the channels available through NOW – on Monday 13th October, so if you want to watch The Walking Dead Season 5 online legally at the lower £4.99 rate, sign up before Thursday 16th to save yourself a couple of quid.

For more information on an Entertainment Membership or to sign up now, hit the button below:

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