Sky on Xbox 360

JohnC.

I'm a bit confused about where to stick this, as it seems to concern a few forums.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8070291.stm
Xbox Live users in UK and RoI will be able to access Sky shows from the autumn. It will include live TV, including sports and movies, as well as catch-up services and on-demand movies.

You don't need Sky equipment or even an existing Sky subscription, although it will probably have its own subscription with an as yet undetermined price, but probably cheaper for people who have more than an existing basic Sky subscription.

People will even be able to watch in groups and chat with each other while watching, though only for sports at first.

ciano1

Wow

I can finally watch television on my...eh...television ?:D

I wonder how this will work though

belmulletman

I use the "Sky Player" all the time.
There is an online part - Live TV (about 18 channels inc. Sky Sports, National Geographic etc... ) and there is an App based part... On Demand Movies and TV Shows (the pc version has the ability to download and watch later, but the streaming is fine!)

It's pretty good and have watched some sport on it while in work and what not!

It's there on PC already (it uses Microsoft's Silverlight stuff). I have it cause my family have SKY and Multiroom... it'll be sweet being able to flick through hundreds of TV shows and Movies and watch 'em when you want as well as having Sky Sports on other TVs without having to pay any more for it!

Mossy Monk

belmulletman wrote: »

it'll be sweet being able to flick through hundreds of TV shows and Movies and watch 'em when you want as well as having Sky Sports on other TVs without having to pay any more for it!

Who says it is going to be free?

belmulletman

Mossy Monk wrote: »

Who says it is going to be free?

That's the way it is at the moment (depending on your Sky Subscription - my folks have the whole lot inc. HD and Mulitroom)... So, given what Skyplayer costs today, it will vary depending on your current Sky sub.

here is a quote from TechRadar UK:

When is Sky Player for Xbox 360 arriving and how much will it cost?

In the autumn... On pricing, neither company is prepared to talk – the Sky Player service [currently] sees people with multi-room get access to the channels they subscribe to [for no extra cost]; people with one box have to pay a multi-room rate to add a single Sky Player account, and people without Sky will have to pay the equivalent of what they would to have a traditional Sky service.

watty

I think this needs Broadband.

So moving to Broadband.


Any significant use will hurt your cap.

There is no meaningful way to connect Xbox to dish. Also the Avatars/Interactive need Broadband. This is Sky's PC Broadband player (which is not free, but included) adapted for online Xbox 360.

thorbarry

Hey, does anybody have any new info on this?

thebman

Cool feature but unusable for most people at least to use heavily as it is going to be heavy for decent quality

JohnC.

Someone on another forum had a go for market research earlier this month in the UK

It's alright....

Only messing, I've just spent about an hour sitting with a 360 connected to a prototype Sky account and was allowed to play about with it, order stuff, watch some things, view something in a 'party' - all that gubbins mentioned at E3 and it's generally quite well put together. It has a few rough edges still and some of the navigation is a bit off but on the whole, it doesn't look bad.

I did make a moan about the fact that if I have sky in my house, it's a bit of a cheek to make me pay for it again but they probably will ignore that bit... I don't know if it was pure placeholder but what seemed to be the full package on the subscriptions tab said £41 which is out of order I reckon. You can do pay-per-view movies on it which looked alright and the idea was to have them stream (with the whole 1080p streaming MS went on about I spose) but as it was a dev kit, I couldn't work out if stuff was locally stored.

The watching in a party wasn't too bad if some of it maybe not for me, you didn't HAVE to watch anything with borders as shown at E3 with the sports coverage, you can go full screen and still chat using the headset and 'emote' with your mii I mean avatar.... which then gives you a PnP view of your mii's - they only had one background and you couldn't actually move your avatar's about although I may have broken it by being able to fly the cam through the walls and everything, which slightly surprised the guy doing the questions. That avatar sort of stuff I wasn't really interested in though tbh. You could be in multiple parties and not be watching the same show but still chat together which was quite good if you wanted to do that sort of thing.

You couldn't add reminders for shows which I thought was bloody stupid and you couldn't easily join what another person was watching because of the above bit about multi-parties not in the same room, which again seemed quite weird. You could change between SD and HD on the fly (dunno why you'd want to though really), the TV guide worked quite well, the front tab had jumps to movies, sport, etc but strangely no music stuff and also not in the same config as on a 'norma'l sky box.

Oh the other quite massive omission from my point of view was the lack of PVR stuff, you couldn't record anything to the HDD, which just seemed daft, what with their being a potential of 120gb sitting there.

Don't want this to become some mammoth post so if you want to know more, just ask smile.gif

They didn't get me to sign a confidentiality agreement or anything so I don't think I'm being out of order by doing this....

Remember, this was a market research test, so any specific details about prices or level of service may not have been finalised.