Sky Stream has arrived in Ireland

Hardly surprising really. There are a number of trends that are rapidly killing off satellite distribution of TV.

In the UK, where most Sky customers are, the main channels are already available on Free-to-air Freeview, so Sky has been losing customers from satellite to Freeview for years, even before the arrival of the streaming platforms. In recent years, viewers have migrated to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney etc for most of their pay-TV needs, so they don't feel inclined to pay for expensive Sky bundles for the remaining free-to-air channels. The new players such as BT/EE in UK and Eir in Ireland are happy to offer TV at aggressively lower pricing than Sky, using next generation platforms such as the Apple TV box, which also handle the streaming apps much better than the legacy Sky boxes. The migration to 4K/8K is also much harder to do on satellite than via streaming, so this is another nail in the coffin for satellite. Sky is fighting back with their own streaming platforms Glass/Stream & Now TV, which dont use satellite, but they have to be dumbed down a bit. to justify the rip-off prices they charge their legacy customers on satellite.

The UK will ultimately dictate the satellite switch-off date, because the Irish customer base is small, but in the meantime Sky will likely keep the satellite pricing higher to encourage migration to streaming.

I'm not a fan of the idea of not being able to record so when the Q deal ends I'll be moving to freesat (until that inevitably ends)

I don't feel we'll see a total end to satellite broadcasting by 2028 but the days of scrolling through hundreds of channels on an EPG and having 3-4 satellites at a single orbital position are well and truly behind us.

Sky are already making strong noises they'll be moving towards MPEG-4 with DVB-S2, and perhaps HD as standard, in line with the BBC and ITV which will cut bandwidth use - and hence number of transponders needed - considerably.

I could see that go a step further with a hybrid approach with popular channels or even individual events on a channel broadcast and the rest streamed (Sky Sports red button is now largely delivered via streaming).

We're also seeing a natural decline in linear broadcasting as it is which will further reduce capacity needed.

Granted, yes, satellite broadcasting isn't cheap so cutting costs there makes sense - but neither is widespread distribution of content over IP.

Satellite costs the same whether you've 1 viewer or 10m and satellite experience for viewers is the same with 1 viewer or 10m. Hard to justify the costs if you're primarily closer to 1 than 10m.

Not so with streaming.

Every viewer costs you money. Having the capability to serve 1m viewers costs a lot more than only putting in the capability to serve 10,000 max. And you don't get a single guarantee that the bandwidth between you and the viewer will even be there to deliver it in realtime (Fortnite consistently sets and breaks its own records for peak global internet traffic every time there's a large update, for example. If you've a big match or event streaming on your platform at the same time as there's a massive Fortnite update dropped, a lot of your viewers could end up very unhappy if their ISP can't keep up).

And streaming live and in realtime is a very different beast altogether to streaming on-demand - the vast majority of streaming today is not done in realtime. Netflix are at it decades and can deliver extremely high picture quality even with extremely low bandwidth. Yet, despite all of their knowledge and experience, their highest profile live realtime streaming event last year descended into total chaos just a few minutes in.

Same as why you can watch UHD 4K Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime without a hitch, but a video call of average video and audio quality can quickly become a garbled, stuttering mess.

I imagine it will exist as a standalone app like Sky Go and be accessable on Sky Q and Sky Stream/Glass devices.

Anyone watching True Detective? Sky are sticking in a single advert about one minute before the actual break in the show. This has happened for two weeks in a row. Slightly irritating.

Yes. See it reported on their own customer forum as well.

I think it's utterly ridiculous that their on demand content has ads anyway - Now TV doesn't, yet Sky Stream costs more AND has a paid-for ad-skipping add-on (which is automatically added to all customers at no cost for the first 12 months).

I haven't had the problem of the puck hanging or crashing when fast forwarding, but it can be slightly clunky. RTE and C4 are best, when you can push forward with FFD and it automatically stops at the end of the ads and restarts the show. With C4 you need to press and hold, with RTE you can just choose FFD x2 and up this to x6, x12 or x30 to get through it quickly.

With Sky's own content or when using Watch from Start, it is a little clunky to get it to restart at the right spot.

Sopranos on sky stream is riddled with ads yet has zero ads on now tv. Very annoying

They aren't installing as many satellite dishes so you don't need installation staff. The contract for carriage on Astra is up in 2028 and the 2 Astra satellites they use are EOL soon as well.

Big marketing push from Sky on at the moment in Ireland for Stream. It's the default option now on Sky.com. Maybe the customer service dept. (dealing with complaints and cancellations) are not relaying concerns back to the marketing dept.?

Separately, I hope they don’t pull the plug on their existing Now TV service to boost Sky Stream numbers. Now is far cheaper (with codes) and better (own hardware) if you just want access to Sky Sports.

Strange one today

Searched for 'Frasier' using voice search, got the usual results, showing 'old' Frasier on C4 and 'new' Frasier on Paramount.

Selected 'old' Frasier, and it opened up the usual screen, with correct episode details, but with a 'Paramount+' logo at the top.

Selected that episode, and it brought me into the Paramount sign-on.

This previously worked for me without any issues, and would have played the 'old' Frasier using the 4Player.

I was able to come down to the list of seasons and episodes, and select from there, and it worked normally.

Is it possible to get into the VM player on Sky Stream? I can't find their recent drama "The Head on Him" through the normal search

I don't think so as I was looking for the VM player last week and it's not there.

Definitely a backward step and not what I want.

Sky stream is also **** which is off putting 😄

It really is. If you're comparing it with Sky Q, then it's obviously not in the same league, but Sky Q has plenty of drawbacks too.

Sky Stream is absolutely light years ahead of Eir TV and based on what I've seen of Vodafone's new box, it's not at the races either.

You need a dish, your box has to be wired to the dish, the box is pretty chunky.

For me, it was needing to be wired up and thus limiting where you can place your TV

Just back to using a dodgy stick for now. Got the whole 4k pack with sky stream and had constant issues with the multiroom boxes losing connection and having to be reset. The UI was terrible to try navigate and the lack of a proper functioning catch up option was the killer. Sky then told me a Q subscription would solve all my problems so I paid for that to be installed again with the 4k multiroom and that was just as bad as the stream with near identical issues. To make matters worse I then had to lodge 2 complaints to get it removed as they incorrectly told me there was no cooling off period and tried billing me cancellation charges. I don't see any other options on the market so am stuck with the IPTV for now. Sky wasn't suitable for my needs but I understand it's perfect for other people's