Sky Go on Android

[John-B]

Hi Everyone

We appreciate that most of you were able to run Sky Go successfully on ICS and that the lack of availability currently on ICS is causing frustration, however the complexity of the Sky Go application means that the bugs we find are not always apparent to customers during usage.  In this case, Sky Go is currently unable to support ICS due to platform stability issues.  Unless rectified these issues would lead to a poor user experience during peak times of heavy usage if the platform is put under too much pressure.

We are working hard to bring some exciting new features to Sky Go in the coming months, for this to be achievable and sustainable we must ensure the stability of the platform is maintained.We apologise for the delay and hope to release the update for ICS very soon.

Cheers 

[Brian4go]

How soon is 'very soon'?  Are we talking days, weeks or months?

[paul1360]

John-B,

Thank you at last an up date, not what many customers wanted to hear but aleast it's something. most prob's others will ask this, why is it that Sky seem to be having a lot of problem's getting sky go to work on ICS & Other phone make's when as you know that there is an app. out that run's and work on both without any faults or problem's?? This is what people are so frustrated and unhappy with from their point of view and no doubt sky are not happy that customers can use this app as it works with their gear and yours don't, Can sky see that??????

iechyd da

[KingfisherUK]

Firstly, thank you for giving us an official update on the ICS issue. It is, quite frankly, long overdue.

I would however like to raise the point of, yet again, the vagueness within the update.

"Complexity in the Sky Go application" is a nice line to hide behind because it doesn't tell us anything. Maybe the complexity is the issue. As has been said many times, there are other apps out there that achieve what Sky Go should do (ie. streaming from a central source, with DRM, to a registered user via a login) on all flavours of Android already, and indeed have been for a long time.

"Unless rectified these issues would lead to a poor user experience during peak times of heavy usage if the platform is put under too much pressure." - This is far more worrying as, to me at least, this suggests that the infracstructure behind Sky Go is not up to the task. If the app itself has to be tweaked to manage the stream from the server, then what is the server doing? Surely the server should monitor and control its own bandwidth as needed and the app plays what it receives. In all honesty, this could also explain any number of other issues with quality, connections errors etc. that all Sky Go users (not just Android) are seeing.

Whilst I genuinely appreciate the update, it feels to me as if with each excuse Sky is digging a deeper and deeper hole for itself.

If Sky Go can't work properly for only Sky subscribers, what hope for Now TV for the masses when it arrives?

[Sev]

Ah, fantastic. Yet again, nothing but placations and excuses. Never a solid answer on a reason or a time-frame for anything. The fact that it took you this long to churn out such a boilerplate reply is rather pathetic in and of itself.

I appreciate that there are technical issues that are beyond the control of the customer services propaganda department, but like the issue with the device limitation (and Sky Anytime Plus when it was first restricted to Sky Broadband only), the way you respond to your customers' concerns is fairly atrocious. You throw out little scraps here and there in the hopes that it'll shut us up on that particular issue for the time being. Perhaps if you actually thought of your customers with a little more respect in the first place, you wouldn't find yourselves with so many PR disasters that you have to spin.

You clearly want our business, as you seem to interact with us as nothing more than money trees that you can squeeze dry. Yet, you spend so much effort on PR trying to spin situations where you're just trying to string us along for as long as possible when you don't want to spend a little more on things that would keep us happy - keep us as paying customers with empty gestures while actually doing the least amount possible to keep our custom. There are so many thing where, if you actually listened to your customers, you'd get a lot more cash out of us for being a genuinely good company that we wantto spend money on.

The hugely frustrating thing is that Sky, on the surface, offer a lot of great services and features. But you get sucked in on them and then realise that so many have arbitrary limitations or restrictions that seriously limit their use (Anytime+, which you fought tooth and nail to keep as a Sky Broadband feature until the backlash was just too much for you to spin; Sky Go 2-device limitation, seriously, you got a customer survey to show the statistics that you wanted it to, congratulations - you claim that you did that to find out what your customers wanted, and yet you blankly ignore the fact that folks actually want more than 2 devices [and those that don't, it makes no difference to them to have more than 2 available]).

Frankly, I'm just getting so bored of your shoddy customer services.

Get it together.

[paul1360]

Sev,

Nice post and you've hit the nail on the head. We all know the PR that Sky spin's but alas it does no longer work for us on here and it's about time understood this also. That is why I find this statement from BSKYB CEO a joke:--

Superserving

In a customer-focused business like Sky, we never lose sight of the people who matter most - our customers.

Well mr CEO you have lost sight of your customers.

iechyd da

[KingfisherUK]

“Importantly, we never forget that such success comes only when consumers choose to reward us with their business. Customers always have a choice and we must walk to their drumbeat. For us, that means serving them with a set of entertainment and communications products which meet their needs better than anyone else.” - Jeremy Darroch, CEO (Sky Annual Review 2011)

Netflix costs me less than Sky Movies and works on ALL platforms without any issues. iPlayer, ITV Player and TV Catchup give me plenty of live TV options on the go, and all work. Where exactly does Sky Go meet my needs better than those, especially since it won't work at all on my Android devices?

Time to stop talking and start acting Sky. Your CEO is telling you that you MUST walk to OUR drumbeat. I suggest you get some people who aren't hard of hearing, and have a sense of rhythm, pretty quickly. We're making a lot of noise but no-one seems to be listening.

[apetc]

Jeez sky go must be the most complicated app ever created truly amazing

[paul1360]

Sky go app has been made that way so they can have complete control of it, but alas due to this they can't fix all the bugs and they can only blame themselves. lol

iechyd da

[AJR37]

Wow! There has been an update to Android called Ice Cream Sandwich? And you mean that Sky has only just found out about it! Wow! It must have only been out since October 2011...

By the way Sky, there is a new version 5.0 Jelly Bean coming out probably in October 2012. Just so you can warm up your PR staff with six months notice so that they can prepare some more rather pathetic excuses...

[paul1360]

AJR37,

Oh that's just great thanks AJR37 you have now given Sky another reason not to unblock Sky Go for ICS now .

After all is said and done has failed big time over Sky Go and have left their loyal customers down very badly and seem to not want change this. To me communication is a two way process and has been is use for a very long time and has been very successful in many area's, but yet again this process is something that sky fail's with. They carryout survey after survey and feedback after feedback about how they are doing and if we are happy, Over the last several weeks 100's of customers have told sky that they are doing things badly so they ignore these and file them under "B" for bin. Even the advisor's on here fail big time and have no interest in this process. Take this thread as an example, It was started by said advisor and customers have thanked the OP for the limited amount of information given, from the 1st reply customers have asked question's (Me to) and not 1 of them have been answered, This goes for other threads on this forum and some going back a long time and yet  some are answered very fast, as if they are cherry picking who to reply to. To me that is not a 2 way process and the CEO can put out all the statements that he wants and they will make no differance at all. Have come to the conclusion that it's a waste of time and effort to ask or say anything on here, sad to say even helping other customers with problems, It's about time someone took hold of this Forum and sorted it out once and for all. By stopping helping other customers the advisors will have to pick up the slack.

iechyd da

[SWentz]

I find this the most funniest thing I've ever heard that Samsung Galaxy SIII is the official phone of the Olympics and on the Sky Go area it states this "Sky TV customers with the Entertainment Extra pack can catch great sporting action this summer while on the move, from live French Open Tennis and Euro 2012 to the Tour de France and The Olympic Games" Notice it states you can watch the Olympics? Yeah funny the SIII is ICS Wow i should have went with Virgin ive heard there better who knows i may change if this company cant keep up with the times

[paul1360]

SWentz,

I agree when I saw that also, I though I was miss reading it or something at first and then I ...... not worth it, Sky seems to be able to get away wit false ad's all the times these days and the people who sort these ad's out seem not to want to rock the boat for some reason with Sky.

iechyd da

[microcat36]

Sky can basically do what ever thing they want, money talks in the modern world and it buys a lot of fireproofing in the business world.

[Son+of+Viv]

microcat,

To true had to laugh thou as on another thread a sky chappie said about the advert :--

Sky Go is available on a selected amount of Android devices this includes Samsing Galaxy S and SII but not any new Samsung devices yet.

We are sorry if you have found this advert misleading in any way however there is a statement disclaimer on the advert detailing this

So because of this declaimer it's ok to use the SIII. magic