Sky Stream has arrived in Ireland

Nigzcurran

Just got sky q installed and it's nearly as bad as stream. I've already had a few errors when I click on the demand stuff. No simple catch up option like virgin offer seamlessly on their tv service. Looks like this will also be getting returned in the next week unfortunately

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121540436#Comment_121540436

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121533582#Comment_121533582

I can add MOTD to my playlist, and it remains there. When I click in, I can play the most recent episode.

brady12

They are both working now again. Both MOTD that is .

AndrewJRenko

We had an odd one last night, looking for the Inside Penneys show, which broadcast on RTE around 8.30.

We went looking on the Sky Stream about 9.30pm, and I was impressed that the voice recognition picked up 'Penneys' as Penneys and not pennies. It found the show listing, but there was nothing available to watch.

However, we went into the RTE Player by choosing another RTE show, did a search inside the RTE Player, and the show came up as available to watch.

Looks like some kind of discrepancy between the Sky listings and the RTE Player.

KildareP

Same. There seems to be a delay of 24-48 hours for Playlist to pick up episodes on RTÉ and Virgin, grand for RTE as the RTÉ Player app is directly accessible but Virgin Media you have to just wait it out.

AndrewJRenko

In broad terms, I'm liking the Sky Stream. I've got the remotes configured to switch on/off the LG tv, and manage volume, so I can put away the LG remotes, which won't be needed for day to day purposes.

It's a fairly substantial culture switch, moving away from scheduled TV and channels, to a more content based approach, choosing what you want to watch and when you want it. The lack of recording hasn't bothered me really, though there was one BBC series that I couldn't pick up.

There's a few inconsistencies in the interface that could certainly be improved. It's a slight PITA that they keep advertising their current 'hot' programmes, even after I've watched those particular series. Something that was a bit more 'aware' would be an improvement.

It's a bit strange how the standard up/down buttons to step through the channels work in the reverse direction after you click into the program information.

It's a bit strange how to fast forward the adverts in the main player requires single press, or a few presses to get to x6 or x12 x 30, whereas in the Channel4 player it requires a press-and-hold to skip the ads.

It got a bit confused between Fargo the movie and Fargo the TV series, both available on Prime. I had to actually go into Prime to choose the series, as it wasn't available through the main Sky interface, where only the movie could be seen.

In general, it's working for me, and saves me the effort of getting a dish with FTA services put in.

Man Vs ManUre

I have this now about 4 months and am happy enough with it. The Playlist feature can be a bit erratic and it’s difficult to organise it, and I suppose you never know how long something is kept on the players which are used to load this Playlist, but I guess the extras on offer outweigh this negative of not having regular recorder. The 2 free cinema tkts a month in Vue are nice!! I will have to arrange something with Sky before the 12 months are up as the monthly price then would be far too high.

KildareP

Have had this close to two months now. I probably won't be keeping it once the 12 months are up.

We bought it originally to get live TV where we had no connections to aerial or satellite and didn't want to run any.

(1) Playlist is not a PVR - I understood that from the get go, and it wasn't a massive use case for us anyway when looking.

Until Call The Midwives launched a new season over Christmas. It's added to Playlist, but currently, only Episode 1 is available on catch-up despite them being on Episode 3 on broadcast. Going to BBC through catch-up and it only shows one episode. Other half NOT impressed.

Even on RTÉ and Virgin content, it can take 24-48 hours after broadcast for content to appear, despite the content being available on the respective players (only RTÉ player is accessible from Sky Stream) almost immediately after transmission. Until they show available to the Sky Stream system, you won't see them in playlist nor can you play them (unless, in RTÉ's case, you go to the RTÉ player app directly).

(2) The "pucks" are clearly built to a cost. Everything is sluggish, laggy, it regularly stops responding to remote commands for several seconds and then "catches up". It's on version 24 of software already and was originally shipped with version 9 - whether they've had 23 previous versions or not I do not know. With the latest update, if you press too many remote buttons while it has gone into its unresponsive state, it seems to cause the puck to reboot completely which means 20-30 seconds staring at a black screen. Jumping between live TV, recordings, or third-party apps is incredibly clunky slow, and generally you'll be thrown back to the homescreen at some point along the way.

(3) Channel hopping too fast can also cause problems. If you jump channels too quickly, you'll land on a channel along the way to be told "Please wait for this programme to load" except it doesn't. Go channel up or channel down either side, no problem. Try and watch the problem channel - nada. This seems to have started only with the latest update.

(4) Live programming has also started to be interrupted by "Please wait for this programme to load" for 10-15 seconds every 2-3 hours with the latest update. Never noticed it before and we'd the darts on for hours on end over Christmas. I've seen suggestions on their forum to wire it by Ethernet to rule out WiFi, except there are people reporting the issue remains while on Ethernet as well and that wiring by Ethernet can actually create more issues (one of which is that the puck doesn't appear happy if it's not connected to WiFi and will complain repeatedly if you have it wired only).

All in all, it appears to still remain a beta trial product, on vastly underpowered hardware, with a lot of quirks left to work out.

JDxtra

Thanks @KildareP - great honest review. I suspected the hardware on this was underpowered. I'm used to the very responsive Apple TV hardware, so I would certainly get frustrated by this.

I'll be sticking with the Now TV app for premium content, and my own solution for FTA content.

fman

Thanks very interesting living with it kind of review.

The bit about the pucks really hit me because it seems to be repeating mistakes from Q. The minis seem to be the bare minimum to get things working under perfect conditions.

It's strange too since the pucks don't need to be a whole lot more than firesticks, Chromecasts etc.

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121653528#Comment_121653528

Interesting points, and you certainly do get the feeling of software controls rather than hardware controls, with a big of lag in the response times.

I've noticed in the past week or so that they're putting just one advert in many of the ad breaks. So by the time you pick up the remote and fast forward, the feckin ad is nearly over anyway, and you spend more time rewinding to find the end of the ad, start of the show! So I'm tempted to actually watch the ad, despite my allergy to ads otherwise. Sneaky feckers.

I don't have that problem watching RTE or C4 stuff, when you can press to skip the entire ad break, and it restarts at the right place.

KildareP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121653573#Comment_121653573

Likewise. We've been an Apple TV household since originally getting rid of Sky Q several years ago and used FTA SaorView and Freesat along with Now TV to replace what Sky-exclusives we did watch. As things stand we still use the ATV for all other streaming apps and only use Sky Stream for live TV and sky exclusive content. It is often quicker and less disruptive to flip the TV over to the ATV for a streaming app than try and navigate on the puck to get to the same app.

On the upside we've a year of a fairly decent Black Friday deal, but I certainly wouldn't be paying the headline price for it based on experiences of the provided hardware to date - absolutely not worth it whatsoever.

If they launched Sky Stream as an app on the ATV (similar to Eir TV here or EE TV in the UK) and it was essentially an expanded Now TV service, that'd be different and I reckon we would keep it on.

In a way, they already have the functionality there to do just that - the Sky Go app performance wise on ATV is superb. Quick, snappy, responsive and clean. However it is severely hobbled - and I expect deliberately so - by a resolution somewhere between SD and 720p and an extremely low bitrate for both live and on demand, as well as no ability to "zap" from one channel to the next.

Clearly they can do high quality streams for both Sky Stream and Now TV, it'd only be a matter of integrating those streams into Sky Go, add channel zapping and the "playlist" feature, and you've the perfect combination of performance and quality.

Butson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121653528#Comment_121653528

Good synopsis. Won't be keeping ours after the 12 months either. Was sold a pup on the phone also regarding BBC. 90% of stuff is not accessible.

Also, was away for the Christmas Holidays (In Ireland) and the puck wouldnt work, blocked by Sky. Linked to IP address. In the era of Firesticks, chromecasts etc a bit silly.

icdg

The Sky Go Apple TV app is undoubtedly “hobbled” as you put it - they seem to be mad scared it will undermine the multiscreen / Whole Home sub. It’s one of the few ways to get Sky Go on a TV but it doesn’t support accessing recordings or streaming live TV from the Sky Q box like other Sky Go apps do. Live TV is still streamed from the internet even if you’re on your home LAN.

Its the same sort of thinking that means, in 2024, Sky still don’t support Chromecast / AirPlay.

There’s some sort of new streaming platform for Sky Sports being planned for around August, so don’t know if that will address the issues.

JDxtra

Article from today on the subject of recording on these streaming services…

https://www.corkbeo.ie/news/local-news/growing-numbers-irish-tv-viewers-28420978

AndrewJRenko

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121662185#Comment_121662185

Seems like someone ordered the product without doing their research, and somebody made an article out of their outrage.

KildareP

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121662944#Comment_121662944

To be fair, it's not exactly made clear during the sales pitch that it's not the TV service we've become accumstomed to since Sky+ became a thing twenty odd years ago.

It's pitched on Sky's website as "The new way to get Sky TV" - if you've come through Sky analogue, to Sky Digital, to Sky+, to Sky+HD to Sky Q, each iteration has added features but retained the same fundamental core functions throughout.

Moving to Sky Stream is a completely different platform and ecosystem altogether - most people don't give a second thought to what actually goes on past the remote control so don't know to have to research the technical aspects of cloud reecording. If it won't do something that Sky has done for over twenty years with Sky+, and they weren't made aware of this, then to them it's broken.

JDxtra

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121663486#Comment_121663486

Absolutely correct. All the streaming operators here - Sky, Virgin Media, Eir and Vodafone - are not sending a clear message to their customers that these boxes all have some 'recording' limitations. This is causing end user frustration and a lot of returned hardware and cancelled services.

Butson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121663523#Comment_121663523

Thsi is true - I was promised all sorts, the whole BBC catalogue updated and on demand, all sporting events uploaded immediatley....pure lies.

icdg

We’ve discussed this issue across the threads for each of the streaming platforms. It seems that with eir, recording restrictions are now limited to RTE and VMTV (presumably so they can inflict us with yet more pre roll adverts) and all other channels (including BBC) can now be recorded. It’s worth nothing though that eir TV is around almost five years and has had a bit of time for these issues to be resolved whereas both Vodafone TV Play and Sky Stream (and VM’s less talked about Stream box too) are only around a few months, so they’ve had less time to address this. Sky Stream is specifically designed a bit different to the others in that its first port of call is the on demand service and then cloud recording after that.

The providers are not going to emphasis features that are going to talk people away from their products. That’s just not good marketing. It is a real issue though for those who are being compelled to “upgrade” from legacy products though, and people should be told upfront about what they are losing. Sky afaik are not doing anything at present to push Q customers over to Stream, yet at any rate.

JDxtra

Virgin Media are not actively pushing their streaming TV service. However, if you call them looking for a better deal on your existing package, the best deals available are ones which require a new fibre install (if available in your area). I've heard the sales reps are very light on the details about what can't be recorded with the new box. You have to be clear with them you want to retain your existing 360 box.

Some 360 boxes are only a year old and are getting decomissioned (hopefully wiped and refurbished). The potential amount of e-waste here is huge, especially when the new boxes get returned because cusomers aren't happy.

cullenswood

...

Nigzcurran

Why can't they all just offer a full 7 day catch up option instead of faffing about with playlists and half arsed recordings

DopeTech

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121666214#Comment_121666214

Greed.

Nigzcurran

Was visiting family over Christmas and they had virgin tv with full catch up so I'll definitely be trying that at some stage

Bellie1

Virgin new streaming service has similar limitations. I reckon your family had the now 360 box that virgin no longer offer?

icdg

TV360 hasn’t been discontinued (yet), it’s still offered to customers who have not been upgraded to full fibre.

There are still loads of Horizon 3 and UPC Mediaboxes out there, never mind TV360 which was only launched in late 2020.

Nigzcurran

Yep it's the standard tv box they have. First time ever seeing the UI on virgin and it looked decent

icdg

Depends which one it is, five minutes with Horizon 3 (big giant box with slanted front and LED display in the middle) and you will lose the will to live! But this is a Sky thread.

decor58

Sky has announced it is to cut its satellite installation staff by 1,000,in Ireland and UK, as they push IPTV services. Is that due to fall in demand for Sky or take up of IPTV.