Sky UK Stops Selling Sky Q Online as Users Nudged to Glass and Streaming
Sky (Sky Broadband) has recently continued their gradual move away from satellite-based Pay TV services by withdrawing their Sky Q kit and service from online sales. New customers are instead being directed to take the company’s latest broadband-based Sky Glass (Sky integrated streaming TV set) and Sky Stream (streaming set-top-box) solutions.
Both Sky Glass and Sky Stream are standalone products that use your home broadband ISP and WiFi connection to stream Sky’s on-demand video content and live TV channels (i.e. without any need for a tedious satellite dish). Despite this, many users often still prefer the experience they get with Sky Q, particularly for key features like live TV recording (Glass and Stream use a cloud-based recording feature that has some caveats).
The big change now, as noted by some of our readers (here), is that Sky have removed the option for new customers to order Sky Q online, although it still appears to be available to those who place an order via the phone or in-store (we suspect Sky’s agents will still try to discourage you from it). Instead, the Sky Q page now states: “We’ve unplugged Sky Q. Plug in Sky Stream for less.”
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This is not the first time that Sky Q has done a disappearing act online, but on this occasion the language appears much more confident that it won’t be returning. None of this should come as much of a surprise, as this has clearly been Sky’s direction of travel for some time, although for now it is at least still possible to get Sky Q if you really want it. But that increasingly seems unlikely to last for too much longer.
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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Apart from the fact Sky Stream is absolutely terrible.
Used Stream for 3 years now, I have 4 pucks and no real complaints. Yes you get the odd glitch but then I did when I had SkyQ.
I will say that I wouldn’t have went anywhere near Stream if I didn’t have FTTP. All four of my pucks are connected by WiFi and are rock solid. PQ on Stream is superior to Q and on those rare days when we get really heavy rain or snow theres no break up or loss of picture. It’s Stream all the way for me.
Loss of Broadband, for me occurs more than loss of Signal, Our ONFL kit is in a non generator backed exchange, and if there’s a power cut in the older part of the village we lose broadband after an hour
I agree, stream is terrible, we tried it for a few days and swiftly called and changed over to Sky Q. You can’t even get half of the channels that you’d get on freeview in it which rendered it useless to my father. Basically every core channel he watched on freeview just wasn’t on it as they didn’t have the permissions for them. We were lucky as we were former sky customers so already had the dish.
This feels pretty premature; many people are still stuck on FTTC or worse where this could take up almost half of their bandwidth which would be a significant downgrade for not really any gain (satellite works fine for most people).
Sky Q is still being sold, just not online. Sky themselves on the Sky Q webpage say if “Your internet speeds falls below the suggested minimum speed” or if you have “High bandwidth usage from other devices on your network” you are probally better off using Sky Q over Sky stream and to give them a call.
If things goto plan (which granted they rarely do) 90% of the population should be covered by FTTP from Openreach by the time Sky’s current contract with its satellite provider expires. That is before counting alt-nets and wireless connectivity options for people out in the sticks who will still not be able to get fttp by then, and if push came to shove Sky could shift to using better codecs such as AV1 which offer 20-30% better compression efficiencies over h.265 to reduce the bandwidth required.
Sky’s contact with Astra (the satellite company) ends in ’29.. so they need to move as many over as possible, to avoid the huge exodus that happens when they announce the Q service will die in x date
So soon to be no new sky customers with broadband lower than 25Mbps?
IIRC Sky Q min contract term is 24 months. Skys contract with their satellite provider SES expires at the end of 2029. So around now would be about right for Sky to start their “last call” process for it. They still have 4 years left, enough time though who really need/want Sky Q to still get a decent service life out of it, but they do need to start thinking about EoL plans. Which starts with rejecting new customers. This is that first step.
Keeping q until they allow us to chuck out recordings to the cloud one time to allow a download to stream!
Seconded! Stream just wouldn’t work for my household, where we’d record something and then box set it a month or two later, or that brilliant documentary from a previous year.
Think Sky missed a trick in not upselling storage so you could use Stream like Q.
Plus the Stream/Glass UI? Yuk!
That’s me never being a Sky customer again. The only positive Sky had over any streaming platform (Including Now TV) was Live TV for live sports. Now they are forcing a delay I wouldn’t even consider a package from them now, especially with hidden and unannounced price rises at point of sale.
You mean Sky Q where the signal that is encoded (delay) and sent via satellite (delay) to Sky HQ from the OB van, that is then subsequently sent via another satellite (delay) to your house? Of course there is a delay on all modern TV broadcasts, due to the encoding schemes used, but common sense should tell you that routes that don’t involve two unnecessary trips to space are shorter. The big question is whether it matters at all that the person in the ground sees the goal 3 seconds before you.
I doubt I will ever be a sky customer again, but then it has been what must be over 20 years since I was and that was only for 12 months. I did use Now Tv for a bit, but that must be over 12 years or so and only for 12 months or so.
Still have the now TV box here somewhere.
Agree with the points you make but Sky Q is still comfortably 10-15 seconds faster than currently available streaming services. I’ve regularly had sports results/actions ruined by phone notifications/calls with friends/family whilst watching “Live” sports on streaming platforms. Very real problem.
@Alan Smithee > The big question is whether it matters at all that the person in the ground sees the goal 3 seconds before you.
Most a football fan, so it doesn’t really effect me. However during big national games which is broadcast on free to view channels I might throw the match up in a small window on a secondary screen, and I will hear my neighbours cheer or grown a few seconds before the action I see while watching those games via the offical IPTV services (iPlayer or whatever the ITV version is called these days).
BUT TBF, in my case, I could just use a PC TV tuner (which I do have) or watch the game on TV using the OTA “freeview” signal instead, But personally I’m not that interested in the sport :-P, but I could see it would be annoying for others.
Not surprised since they only renewed the satallite for another 3 years.
Never had Q as the skyhd+ we have had for the last 14 years is still ticking along and happily doing everything we need it to but guess we will have to start looking at other options in the next 2 years once sky send out the “we are closing all satallite services soon and will only be available online” notices.
100% it will still be broadcasting after 2029.
Streaming is rubbish, lose your internet and you’ve got nothing.
Can’t skip adverts unless you pay .
When sky stop sky q I’ll leave,
Too much messing about skipping aps
Not good for older people
Need a sky q equivalent that records downloads.
That is why you always have some sort of back up if you are that bothered, all I have is streaming, if my broadband goes down then I would either pick a DVD/Blu-ray to watch, read or listen to some music, not that my broadband have gone down to any degree to stop me doing stuff for years.
Tonight I am thinking of watching a DVD, not sure what but something, or read.
This is the problem, people rely on their broadband too much and cry if/when it goes belly up for a while.
Saying that and a few years ago, I never thought I would say this, streaming is the way to go, watch what you want, when you want.
The one problem is people who don’t have great broadband.
This is an awful move for anyone rural. This is only viable with FTTP which really isn’t going to reach anywhere near everywhere any time soon. Even where there are government subsidised contracts, rollout is painfully slow and at least some properties are being de-scoped without any transparency to the process.
I don’t really see how a dish is tedious either? Lots of houses already have them, and if they don’t, installing one takes what, 30 mins? What is really at issue here is that Comcast don’t want to fund Astra anymore, it’s all about cash. Make the ISPs pay for distribution.
If a satellite option goes then so does my subscription.
I don’t like it, But I can see Skys point of view. The majority of their customer base is (or have already) shifting to streaming in one form or another and the satellites Sky are using from SES are pretty much at the end of their service life. Hard to justify the expenditure for new satellites for a declining customer base.
Curious about your statement about making ISPs pay for distribution. Surely you mean make Sky pay for distribution (which I personally don’t agree with for net neutrality reasons), because atm, Sky pay for distribution of their service. They pay SES for use of their satellites and they pay wholesale network providers (Openreach/Ciyfibre) line rental for their Sky Boardband customers. I just don’t see the arguement why other ISPs should be paying Sky to distrube IPTV traffic when Sky are already direct billing the consumers of of that traffic (and other Pay TV providers who offer Sky content already pay Sky for that content)
I will do the same, they can stuff it
I have Sky Stream and it’s positioned next to my ASUS BE92U WiFi 7 router. It regularly needs to be reset to restore its internet connection when its woken from sleep. I’ve tried everything – setting an assigned IP address on my router – etc. It’s so unreliable. It does it all the time! Open to suggestions on how to fix but after putting my issues into ChatGPT it curated many user issues and basically confirmed there is a fundamental problem with the software which Sky is incapable of addressing. I wish Sky would instead focus on an app for AppleTV and comparable devices instead – would be so much better.
I agree Sky would be much better spending resources on an AppleTV app. After all they already have the NowTV app so wouldn’t be hard. That said I guess they loose subscription money because they get you to rent multiple boxes one for each tv.
Seems to me that the option is to leave Sky and go to a NowTV subscription. Other than you have no record option most programs are available on demand.
Is there an option to cable it and turn WiFi off ? Q does not play nicely on WiFi but works fine wired into a Mesh with WiFi off and all the Minis the same when using a non Sky router.
Yes, the Sky devices have ethernet ports and will use it in preference to wifi. Hopefully the OP is using ethernet if it really is that close to the router.
ChatGPT won’t know anything. The Sky Stream and Glass I have access don’t seem to have this issue. Perhaps it’s that Asus router?
Your first error there was asking ChatGPT instead of speaking to someone real from Sky or on a forum.
First port of call would be to connect via an ethernet cable instead of wireless.
After that look to speak to Sky support and advise them you have a faulty unit, as they retain ownership of Sky Stream devices, they support it and have to look into it. Not saying they will make it easy for you mind.
On your router consider changing DHCP lease time, see if that makes a difference. Try a factory rest on the Stream device too, not just network.
That is actually an asus BE92 router issue not sky, got same damn router and get issue on other services. Solution I found so far, and will message asus in new year, is I set asus router to reboot every 24 hours, I set a time like 4am when ppl in house is normally zzz (yes I know it’s 03:46 now) lol
I had this issue with wifi connectivity after the box was sleeping with a different router, then that router was upgraded, and the issue remained.
The sky stream box had loads of issues like “Please wait for the channel to load” and Sky tried firmware updates to resolve as many people were complaining.
Not a single issue with other devices or streaming in general on gig1 connection.
Not sure why there is a defence of Sky, rather than accepting the product could be better. I have no issues with any other device. To have the puck wired would be ugly, and frankly, the product isn’t sold as wired only, so why is it unreasonable to expect it to work reliably over WiFi? My AppleTV doesn’t randomly disconnect or have issues waking from sleep.
ChatGPT curated responses from the Sky forums and publicly available forums, such as Reddit. That’s how it works – it doesn’t make up the advice?
Ask the lawyers who got pulled up in court for submitting false citations in their cases as to how accurate generative “AI” can be.
People here have provided reasonable suggestions. It’s not a “defence of Sky” to suggest that the router might possibly be at fault. You might have spent a lot of money on said router and perhaps that’s why you instantly blame Sky, but it can’t be ruled out.
If you don’t want to use ethernet – even just temporarily to prove it’s wifi related – that’s up to you, but given the Sky box can’t work completely wirelessly (in terms of power and connection to the TV) then one more cable isn’t really that big of a deal. Up to you though.
I know it’s a first world problem for many. My boss has a Sky Q main box plus four mini boxes. Retained FTTC service is lousy (22mbps) but would probably support one 4k stream, and it supports the mini boxes. Main home wifi network is via a Starlink service because Sky Q doesn’t like Starlink latency. Imagine four/five Sky Stream boxes running over Starlink.
I would get Sky if it were an app like Netflix, Disney+ etc that you can just install on Google/Amazon TV devices and the like, but no. Special boxes only. I like my own existing hardware, thanks.
I have Netflix, Disney+ and AppleTV apps on my Sony and Samsung tvs.
If you don’t have them, have you tried updating the firmware on your tv to grt all the latest updates?
@paul butler – No, I want SKY as an app. Like the other providers.
I think many are missing the underlying point of this. It’s cheaper for Sky to go streaming only and even if subscription numbers were down profits would not reduce and would likely increase because all of the installers they don’t need. You as a customer are not important only the shareholders are important. Profit is the only thing large companies understand or care about.
I record many programmes so won’t move to Sky Glass
I hope this is the first nail in the coffin for over the air TV. I know its sky and via a dish, but I still hope this is the first nail in the coffin for all over the air TV. I would much rather TV was via the internet and all of the available spectrum was used for Wifi and 5G coverage (and terrestrial TV was subscription based and the TV licence was disbanded)
Anthony must’ve ChatGPT’d that to troll everyone, you have to try a bit harder that that
Sad to see Sky Q take a step back, we’re going to lose the recording functionality, but Sky Stream / Glass will become better propositions as the product matures, presently there’s a delay in live sport, connections can glitch and recording functionality is not that great.
I demo’d Stream and it’s not that intuitive, pushes streaming services a bit too hard and is clunky as hell, I’m sure it will improve and Q will eventually be phased out.
They’ll be some kind of backup service for the fringe cases where broadband is poor or you can’t get good from terrestrial TV.
We’re in the era of the “accountant and bar graphs” and all they care about are numbers – if Stream/Glass makes the graphs more green that’s all they care about. End customer product and care doesn’t make bar graphs green!
Stick with Aerial TV more than enough to watch all freeview (Free to air)
Personally, I’m not fond of the idea of switching to streaming, especially given the lack of a local DVR for content which isn’t available on demand or I watch sporadically so want longer term.
I doubt they couldn’t implement a DVR feature via USB or just make a box with a built in HDD.
Also means more problems the odd time the internet goes down or I want to do something when the main viewer is at home.
I’m guessing that the next move Sky will make will be in the spring price rises. They’ll more than likely increase the prices for Sky Q customers who are out of contract, then try to push them towards the stream option when they call to cancel / complain. We have FTTP and use streaming services but prefer the Q experience for “normal” telly.
This is all planed NO Live TV Or recording Streaming is rubbish No BB or power cut you have had it we Had City fibre BB go down in summer 6 days and counting
No tv Phone internet radio smart speakers dump doorbell not working kids no internet papa it was hell i work nights i record TV and download films on Sky Q
Q is the best platform but media company’s Sky Virgin EE dont care about customers its Greed ADS ADS sky charge £9 for HD most channels are hd Now HD 4K TV complete rip off
does your Sky Q setup work during a power cut, then?
I never have an issue with Stream but it is connected by an ethernet cable to my router.
Personally I still prefer Sky Q, because I love being able to record. And if I get a broadband outage I can still watch Sky TV via my dish.
Never used sky stream but Sky sports on Now TV averages 40 seconds to 120 seconds behind Live.
TNT / Discovery averages 30 seconds behind live.
Amazon easily leads the way as it averages 5 to 10 seconds behind live.
So tech is available …… I’m just not sure sky is able to do it.
Sky Sports do have a low latency channel, 922 and the delay on live football is around 12 seconds.
Do what I do if broadband too slow or goes down just hotspot to mobile as 5g is always faster anyway
because everyone has the tech skills / spare mobile contract to do that?
None of the BBC iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4 / 5 streamed content is in surround sound 5.1 it is all stereo only. This is a huge step backwards along with the loss of recordings. It can take me months to watch some series. Plus some on demand stuff goes after a matter of days / weeks ( news stories etc).
I had sky stream for about 7 months.
Had to use the ombudsman to force Sky to let me leave penalty free and refund me the full amount I had paid.
Easily the most attrocious service Ive ever used.
The puck is abysmal, poorly made and horrible to use.
The stuttering and audio issues are plentiful.
Every single other device I own and can stream works perfectly but the Sky puck wouldn’t.
When they started blaming my ISP instead of taking blame themselves I started my case with the ombudsman and won a full refund and penalty free cancellation of the contract.
Avoid, avoid, avoid at all costs
Sky – Let’s cancel use of Satellite’s (its old and expensive) and use the Internet to deliver our services..
Elon and Amazon – Lets use satellites to deliver Internet connectivity…
Some crazy person then uses StarLink to connect his SkyGlass….
Sky Q was ideal as I worked a 5 over 7 days 24hours cover. Q with recording was really the only option! To watch favourites In my time.