Sky UK Adds “Smart New Features” to Sky Q TV Box Platform
Sky (Sky Broadband) has today unveiled a “raft of new features” for their Sky Q TV boxes and service, such as a new expanded view User Interface (UI), simple new show and sports centres, intuitive smart buttons, Disney+ in HDR (for the first time) and improved voice discovery. But still no Sky Q over broadband.
We’ve mentioned some of these improvements before in prior leaks, such as the enhanced voice search, but at the time we didn’t know everything that would be changing. Sky are describing this as the “biggest change to the award-winning box since launch,” although it’s much more of an evolution than a revolution.
The following changes are expected to roll-out to Sky Q TV customers over the “next few weeks.” Over the coming months Sky will also be adding more Sky Nature shows, Sky originals and Sky Cinema movies in time for Christmas. HDR for live sport will be available in 2021.
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Key Sky Q Changes
– Expanded View UI
The new UI removes the static menu bar, which is instead replaced by a dynamic collapsible menu, letting you see a third more of the stuff you love (i.e. less searching required).
– Show Centres
Each TV show will now have a go-to destination for every available episode. All seasons, episodes, recordings, broadcast schedules and on-demand links are together in one place. Plus, there’s a new smart button coming that gets you to the episode you want quickly. So, if you’re halfway through an episode of Gangs of London, it’ll say “continue ep. 3”, or if you’ve just finished, it’ll suggest you start the next episode (a fair few of Sky’s rivals can do this already). The smart button will switch between Continue, Delete, Watch from the Start, or Play the next episode – all based on what you watched last.
– Sports Centres
Similar to the above, except including all the latest games, news, documentaries, fixtures, podcasts and tables. For example, saying “football” into the voice remote will take you to a page that brings together live and on demand football content from all channels and apps including; Sky Sports, Sky Sports App, BT Sport, terrestrial channels, YouTube and Spotify.
– Improved Voice Discovery
Sky Q will now enabled users to ask for themes and genres, alongside actors. For example, saying “thrillers with Nicole Kidman” will bring up relevant suggestions of what to watch. You’ll soon be able to ask for entertainment themes too, such as “new shows“, “Halloween” or “Christmas” etc.
– HDR on Disney+ (provided your box can support it)
Fraser Stirling, Sky’s Group Chief Product Officer, said: “We’ve redesigned Sky Q to make it even smarter, simpler and better at aggregating all of the TV and app content you love into one place. A new-look UI, improved voice search and more intuitive navigation make everything easier to find without having to search around … And we’re not stopping there, the tech team behind Sky Q and Sky Go are working hard on loads of new updates that we’ll be rolling out every few months, so you can expect your Sky TV experience to keep getting better.”
However, we’re still awaiting Sky’s long-in-gestation plans for a Sky Q TV over broadband (rather than Satellite) service. Sky’s Chief Product Officer, Fraser Stirling, has said that the company is still “working on it” for the UK, but other aspects of the Sky Q platform’s development have simply taken priority. In the meantime, it looks like Sky will focus on a hybrid approach of satellite and IP network based content delivery.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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They don’t want to pay bandwidth costs for Sky over internet? They could offer Sky over internet for Sky broadband users only and then use multicast.
I doubt they will do that as that could still potentially cut off a lot of the people who are in apartment blocks and say stuck on Hyperoptic or another small ISP or KCOM Apartment owners for example seems pointless to cut off that revenue for the cost of bandwith.
They have the IPTV channels on Now TV and Sky Go so must be other limitations they are trying to figure out.
Sky Go and NOW TV are somewhat limited platforms, while taking masses of channels (via Satellite) and making them, as well as the rest of the content experience / features, available via Sky Q over broadband is a much bigger project. Still they’ve already done it in two other countries..
NowTV and SkyGo are a small subset of the channels available – scaling that up really needs a full E2E managed service. BT TV’s implementation of NowTV is a great example of implementing their service as a true IPTV solution (including channel recording).
I assume BT TV is still using an evolution of the BT Wholesale TV Connect platform (and Talk Talk also?) so I’d guess Sky will be looking to their own IPTV CDN rather than outsource.
It’s more a matter of focussing on their hybrid platform, and Sky is looking to move more content over to IP including linear and VOD. Sky X won’t be available in the short term.
HDR a channel you know you are losing soon?
ok.
Disney+ is their streaming service. You are thinking of the Disney channel. Different thing. Disney channel is being removed from live tv but added into Disney+ instead.
The promo pic’s funny because they’ve shrunk the left menu sidebar down but there’s a gaping wide chasm of nothing on the far right. Maybe they should’ve chosen a show with more than two series.
No HDR for customers on the original v1 box unless they stump up £50 for a self install upgraded box.
Forgot the link.
https://www.sky.com/shop/pre-reg/entertainment
I’m sure some of these changes will be welcome
but Sky’s ongoing saga with FTTP and HDR is
much more important in my view. This is a bit
like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
As usual not a word to their customers, they just dump it on you like it or not. I’ve only just got used to the original crap interface and now they’ve changed it without warning or explanation what the hell is going on and now I’m back to square one again as I’ve no idea what I’m doing with the damn thing. Shit customer service.
You must be the only one who thinks it’s crap. Has some flaws, such as the lack of a true, simple “back” button, but it is the best live+catchup TV implementation in the UK.
Agree total crap keeps freezing and recordings all over the place. Their testing team have got to be rubbish.
Sky’s new update promise filled me with hope. I don’t know why. As an early adopter of Sky Q and its first generation remote control I giddily upgraded my subscription to get the “best” what Sky had to offer. Fast forward 4 years later and I’m still fiddling with a touch remote and envy my old Sky+ remote control’s dedicated “TV guide” button. Ahhh simpler times. But nowadays Sky expect me to press 4 buttons to get to the TV guide. Anyway Sky Z is probably around the corner, expect less functionality and higher monthly payments. As a 26th year customer I will probably sign up!
I only have Sky Q HD because I like the features of the box. Most of their exclusive channels are rubbish and I tend to watch what would be free if only Freeview came up with a decent box.
HDR is only available if you have the latest Sky Q box and if you don’t you have to pay £50 for the privilege, on top of that you then need to ensure your HDR TV is capable of HLG before you can watch HDR content through Sky and most TVs before 2017 won’t support it.
If you already have HDR TV without HLG and have Apple TV or Shield TV 2019 then use these to watch Disney+ or Netflix in HDR.
Totally agree with Jean and Glyn,no prior notice or explanation of supposed better system.Just spent 1/2 hour flicking through endless pages of everything except what I was trying to find..Sorry not impressed Sky.
The new menus are dreadful!
They’ve removed being able to see the Tv whilst navigating recorded programs.
It defaults to the first program in a series if you choose Watch Now.
It seems to require so many more button presses to access what you want.
I’m so not against change, but I fail to understand why on earth they have changed a system which, in my opinion, was good, clear and easy to use to this!
I had been considering moving to another service to get a decent internet speed and I think this may have now forced my hand.
If Sky could provide settings to allow you to choose the features you like, rather than just put changes out there, it would be so much better.
I was hoping for an expandable TV guide it’s far too crammed and was the only thing actually needing an update totally disappointed.
I agree, hate the fact I can’t watch tv whilst browsing the recordings menu, you can listen to it but not watch – which is even more annoying. I’ve also lost count of the number of times I’ve watched a escorting then gone to delete it to find I’ve deleted the next episode and have to then go into deleted items an reinstate it!!
The new menu is rubbish you cant see what channel your on and I think you are pressing more buttons than before just to find out if one of the sky channels download a program in UHD is hard work
I think it’s a step backwards
Disappointed
The new interface is dreadful!When watching a series it says continue and doesn’t take you to the next episode in line recorded but takes you to an episode way in advance and every programme and episode is now harder to find!
Terrible new interface can’t see the program or channel playing whilst looking at recordings and when going to a recording so many drop downs rather than straight to the first one to play in a series. The delete etc could easily be hit when finished. Much more long winded. An option to keep preferred settings Would have been good and no notice before it happened just turn on and get presented with this nightmare. Not happy
New features are great if the product actually works properly on the basics. I have never experienced a worse wifi performance in any product , even going back more than 10 years. And for those who feel the need to mention ..interference from other wifi, thick walls etc,, please don’t bother , I live in a remote location with no houses around me for miles, I worked all my career in communication industry and have a top class wifi installation which works perfectly on everything except this crap from Sky which I only have because I live remotely. They should be embarrassed about releasing such a piece of rubbish and focus on fixing it that rather than new features which are of marginal benefit compared with basic features such as getting an updated TV guide. Absolute crap. I ran software and hardware development teams for a couple of multi-national comms companies and if I had designed this I would have expected to be fired.
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