Sky UK Adds HDR Movies and New Features to their TV Platform
Customers of Sky TV (Sky Broadband) may be pleased to learn that, as expected, the provider is about to rollout 40+ movies with support for High Dynamic Range (HDR) picture quality to their Sky Q platform in time for Christmas 2020, which will be available via their Sky Cinema channel(s).
Sky officially added HDR support in May 2020 (here), which complements Ultra HD (4K) resolutions by enabling video content to contain even more colour and vibrancy. Sadly, their HDR support only works on some of the newest Sky Q set-top-boxes (here) and you will of course need a supporting subscription. But at launch there was only a limited amount of content and now this is being extended to movies.
A total of over 40 HDR-enabled movies will be “rolling out over the next month” to Sky’s platform, such as classics like the Back to the Future trilogy, as well as the The Secret Garden, Dolittle, Le Mans 66, all 8 Harry Potter movies and many more from 9th December 2020.
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On top of that Sky are also adding some new features to both their Sky Q and Sky Go platforms.
New Sky TV Features
Sky Q – You can now watch recordings, video on demand and access apps, even if your TV satellite signal is lost. We assume this will harness your broadband ISP connection, although Sky sadly has yet to do this for live channels (except on some channels via NOW TV).
Sky Q – More ways to use voice search. You can find personalised recommendations with “What should I watch,” which will show you TV and movies suited to you, or say “Show me great TV” to see the best of Sky and Netflix, or “Made for Laughter lovers” for comedy fans.
Sky Q – A more personalised “What’s On Now and Next” rail on the home page, which should mean fewer visits to the TV Guide.
Sky Q – Ability to add a “PIN Code for Apps”, so parents can choose and manage what apps their kids are using on the TV.
Sky Go – Video shorts that show the latest trending sport news, interviews and action.
Sky Go – Access to Sky’s red button channels so you can watch even more Master’s Golf, EFL and Nations League matches.
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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I believe the Discovery+ app launches tomorrow on Sky Q which will be free to access for 1 year.
Just need profile now.
Profiles, mini box 4K / HDR & Prime Video
Seconded! Hopefully one day eh.
Understand and her would be nice on the mini boxes
Apple TV app would be nice too…
An all section as is now with Profiles to assign & separate recordings & settings.
Ability to duplicate Favourites to mini boxes
4K/UHD HDR mini box swap.
Apple TV, Amazon Prime & BritBox Apps
Sky gave me free UHD on my movies package about 5 months ago and to this date it still takes 8 hours to download a movie on 75/19…. im also on the latest box too….. loads of tosh!
Works fine for me. Maybe it’s a problem with your setup.
Then you are so obviously NOT on “75/19” ..!
I had the same problem it was my amp it wasn’t putting my box through to my tv in hdr, bought a new denon and it works great.
I feel your pain …
check your connection from your sky box.
i’m using powerline and recently moved the plug near the router and experienced very slow downloads on sky i.e 4hours for ghost busters in uhd, i repositioned to a different wall socket and now UHD’s start ~30s after requesting so i can start watching while the rest downloads.
How about fixing the audio drops on sky q, I would be happy with that rather than adding more features fix the ones that are broke first