Sky Stream

[MatthewL]

Anyone moved over to it yet?

 

My contract is up and the price is going up by £8 to keep my traditional dish package to £52 and it could do down to £35 for their new steam.  After thoughts on it?  Other than the £39.95 initial delivery fee is it worth the move?

 

I like recording things and playing back but now its all streamed.  Is it more hassle moving and should I keep what I have an accept the cost?

[ZeroHour]

I actually posted a few days ago about it, see below for my impressions:

 

[6Foot2]

No aerial and no dish (although the one the previous owners used is still on the front of the house, as are the aerials on the chimney and on the kitchen extension)

 

Everything comes down our FTTP connection from EE. 5Foot2 was sceptical at first, but she's happy with it now.

 

👍

[MatthewL]

I have a TV aerial put in when I moved in with aerials to each room so freeview is available.

 

I'm in too minds what to do, what I have now works for me for the little TV I watch, if I was to go down the Now TV route for example I would need to get something to watch it on as I dont have anything at the minute as I watch everything through the Sky box and its apps.

[ZeroHour]

The UI of the stream is decent, its just slow, every time you restart a non sky channel program you have to wait and wait for it to launch the app. I kept expecting them to do a second gen version by now but the ram pricing may be stopping them.

[synaesthesia]

I can't offer an opinion on the Sky offering as we've just moved away from them to Virgin due to pricing with a similar streaming box. My wife is happy with it generally, but I'm not a fan. I tried to push Virgin to have the more traditional "cable" setup to no avail.

With everything entirely tied to your internet connection, should something happen, you know about it. Not only don't you have internet, you don't have TV either, meaning your family is then reliant on their mobile data for entertainment or general connectivity. 

Even on FTTP, contention is still a thing and the jitter is noticeable at certain points of the day most days and we know not to watch anything modern/films at around 5pm on a weekday as it will nearly always drop from 4k to HD. Even SD streams can stutter from time to time.

Oddly, the amount of data being pushed around the house doesn't seem to affect it as much as outside usage, both me and my son can be gaming whilst I'm downloading and the wife is watching Wednesday at 4K and it won't drop a beat. How much of that is specific to Virgin I don't know. but I'm quite sure it's more to do with the tech itself.

Too many eggs in one basket I feel and it won't be long before the ISP's are offering an option (if they aren't already) to tether to your mobile phone to slurp your mobile data as backup.

[Rob_D]

46 minutes ago, synaesthesia said:

I tried to push Virgin to have the more traditional "cable" setup to no avail.

With everything entirely tied to your internet connection, should something happen, you know about it.

Back in the day didn't Virgin use the coax for both internet and TV? (okay I'm probably thinking of 20 odd years ago)

[DalekSec]

We have 2x Sky Streams and 3x Apple TVs

 

Sky Streams only used to watch live tv, works flawlessly with UHD Sport on our 1Gbps connection. 

 

Tbf all our streaming boxes work as intended, all on Wireless (WiFi 6)

[synaesthesia]

57 minutes ago, Rob_D said:

Back in the day didn't Virgin use the coax for both internet and TV? (okay I'm probably thinking of 20 odd years ago)

Yeah but one wasn't reliant on the other - TV service could go belly up but internet still behaved, but there were always times when both went. If my failing memory serves me correct I think they were separate up to the local exchange/green box then sent from there to the premises via the coax but that's from when it was NTL!

[Edu-IT]

On 08/09/2026 at 23:10, ZeroHour said:

The UI of the stream is decent, its just slow, every time you restart a non sky channel program you have to wait and wait for it to launch the app. I kept expecting them to do a second gen version by now but the ram pricing may be stopping them.

There's a new UI coming very soon.

 

I've had Sky Glass / Stream since launch and apart from the odd blip, it's been fairly solid.

[6Foot3]

I'm paying £27 per month for Sky Stream. I would try to get a better price

[altecsole]

I've been looking at leaving Sky and it looks like we will purchase a Manhattan satellite recorder - https://manhattan-tv.com/freesat/manhattan-s4r-tv-recorder, probably the 2TB version. It's £299, but our current Sky cost is £72. We already have a Roku box, which we'll use for streaming services. 

[Norphy]

4 minutes ago, altecsole said:

I've been looking at leaving Sky and it looks like we will purchase a Manhattan satellite recorder - https://manhattan-tv.com/freesat/manhattan-s4r-tv-recorder, probably the 2TB version. It's £299, but our current Sky cost is £72. We already have a Roku box, which we'll use for streaming services. 

I'm not entirely convinced that that's worth the money. Terriestrial broadcasting is getting to the end of its life in 2034 and the Astra satellites that are used for Freesat and Sky are being wound down within the next three or four years. At this point I wouldn't buy anything which relys on them. 

[altecsole]

8 minutes ago, Norphy said:

I'm not entirely convinced that that's worth the money. Terriestrial broadcasting is getting to the end of its life in 2034 and the Astra satellites that are used for Freesat and Sky are being wound down within the next three or four years. At this point I wouldn't buy anything which relys on them. 

Thanks — platform longevity is something I’ve considered, but I don’t think the position is quite as definite as that.

 

The 2034 discussion concerns terrestrial DTT/Freeview, whereas the Manhattan S4-R is a Freesat satellite recorder and doesn’t use terrestrial broadcasting. Even for Freeview, 2034 is currently the end of the protected period and a decision point, rather than a confirmed switch-off date. Continuing some form of terrestrial service into the 2040s is still one of the possibilities being discussed.

 

The Astra 2E/2F/2G satellites are admittedly getting older: their nominal design lives run out around 2027–30. However, that isn’t necessarily their actual retirement date, and it doesn’t establish that Freesat will close when they reach it. SES and Sky extended their Astra 28.2°E capacity agreement until 2029, and I can’t find any announced date for closing Freesat or UK satellite broadcasting.

 

I agree that television is moving towards IP and I wouldn’t assume a new Freesat box will necessarily have a ten- or fifteen-year useful life. In my case, though, I specifically want proper local recording, series links and unrestricted fast-forwarding, which the current internet-based alternatives don’t reproduce particularly well. At £300, compared with the £72 a month I’m currently paying Sky, it would pay for itself in about six months. Even if satellite broadcasting eventually changes around the end of the decade, it should still have been worthwhile.

[MatthewL]

Those who have steam how have you found going from been able to record to just streaming?

 

I don't know anyone personally thats moved yet so cannot even go check it out.  Big thing for me is recording then play back (without the ads!!!), does the stream option work for you?  I like to put things in my planner and forget about them, do you think it would cause me issues or should I just stay put?

[6Foot2]

When we were recording programmes, we hardley ever went back and watched again.

 

Now we can usually watch on demand, if we want to see *that* item again.

[MatthewL]

If you say want to watch comething on Sky Witness where as on Q I would record it, with the playlist does it put all the episodes there for you to watch or do you have to go for each one?  I just want to set my reminder and come to it later if that makes sense.  I know the playlist the the new bit.  I forget about things and there is a lot I like to watch but can never remember what channel its on hence I record and forget!

[Ditto]

My experience of Sky Stream via the Sky Puck isn't probably printable. Adverts and bad implementation is the problem. The biggest issue I hit was trying to watch a currently live event from the beginning (so maybe 20 minutes behind live) was that it was a complete nightmare. I could have 20 minutes of the same ad cycle time and time again for just wanting to go back or forward maybe 5 minutes. Pop to another channel for a few moments and then come back - another round of adverts, and could be 5 or more minutes of them. I got to chat to a deeply tecnical person once and he admitted it was server based triggers that led to the problem. The idea of paying for an additional £5 for ad skipping was an insult. In truth it isn't ad skipping, it's very poor ad fast-forwarding. I gave up trying to do what I did. When I move soon, or if I stay, I will only do so where the box had a storage media device so you are working through a true recording. It was so awful Sky even agreed to swap for Sky Q, whereas I upgraded from Sky HD. Actually between Sky HD, I had a couple of years with BT where there was a device with storage. I presume EE is the equivalent nowadays, but I would try vrey hard to avoid streaming for my scenario. So, I will move soon, and want to look at the Apple TV option that several people have mentioned as that seems to have a decent reputation. In summary, get on to the Sky Forums and have a good delve around. Things may have improved, but I was left with the feeling the current streaming design is fundamentally skewed to the advertisers rather than the paying customer.

[MatthewL]

Thanks for that, I am getting bad vibes about Stream from everything I've read and seen elsewhere, think I will stay with Q for the time being.

[ZeroHour]

4 hours ago, Edu-IT said:

There's a new UI coming very soon.

When's that due out?

I just saw there is a new Sky Go app where I think you can actually use it now without paying for multiroom 🤞