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.”

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.