topic Re: Recording watching quality in Sky Glass

Recording watching quality

AlexB12345 — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 09:02:16 GMT

We got a Sky Glass gen 1 as soon as it came out some years ago and unfortunately we promptly sent it back... due to busy lives we watch a lot of recorded stuff. We noticed that watching recorded programmes on the gen1 the picture quality was poor even though it was perfect on the live system. Sky admitted that it was a problem and agreed to the tv being returned.

Does the gen2 have the same issue or has it been resolved.?

Re: Recording watching quality

BenJoBanjo — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 09:20:35 GMT

@AlexB12345 wrote:
We got a Sky Glass gen 1 as soon as it came out some years ago and unfortunately we promptly sent it back... due to busy lives we watch a lot of recorded stuff. We noticed that watching recorded programmes on the gen1 the picture quality was poor even though it was perfect on the live system. Sky admitted that it was a problem and agreed to the tv being returned.
Does the gen2 have the same issue or has it been resolved.?

It depends on what you watch and how it is made available on demand.

Content you add to a playlist from a BBC channel will play back from the iPlayer app for example. The BBC are usually pretty good at not compressing their content too much but it can often be the case that the on demand version is still more heavily compressed than the live channel stream. The other downside of iPlayer is that it won't play anything back with 5.1 audio. Many high end BBC drama series and any movies shown by the BBC will often have a 5.1 surround mix but you won't get this if you watch via iPlayer. Only the live channel stream will carry the better audio.

Channel 4 content is often quite variable on demand when watched via their app. ITVX I personally find isn't too bad on my OLED TV.

Sky's own content is usually good and pretty much identical to any live broadcast stream. In fact, most of their non-sport content is better viewed on demand as you'll sometimes get it in UHD with HDR. The live UHD HDR channel streams are only used for sports content.

So to answer your question, yes the gen2 Glass does have the same issue, but only really for non-Sky sourced content.

Re: Recording watching quality

AlexB12345 — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 09:30:38 GMT

Perfect. Thank you. We'll stick with Q.

Re: Recording watching quality

Jporch316 — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 19:02:32 GMT

@AlexB12345

Being perfectly honest (and maybe my eyes are too old !) but I have never really noticed any difference between the live showings and "recordings"

if anything my experience has been the opposite and most shows look better to me from a streamed source

I don't really watch a lot on channel 4 so there is that to take into account.

Re: Recording watching quality

BenJoBanjo — Mon, 21 Jul 2025 22:13:00 GMT

@Jporch316 wrote:
@AlexB12345

Being perfectly honest (and maybe my eyes are too old !) but I have never really noticed any difference between the live showings and "recordings"

if anything my experience has been the opposite and most shows look better to me from a streamed source

I don't really watch a lot on channel 4 so there is that to take into account.

Everything is streamed on Stream & Glass as you well know. It's the difference between the live channel streams vs the on demand versions which is the key here.
Channel 4 for example can look great on the live stream via the EPG on a Stream puck, but stream the shame show on demand via the Channel 4 app and it can look terrible. Compressed, low bit-rates resulting in occasional posterisation. Not good.
A Sky Q recording of a broadcast is always going to look better than that.

The UK broadcasters really need to up their game & improve their apps & their on demand compression. Sky's own content is generally excellent, but then it should be on Sky's own hardware and OS.

Re: Recording watching quality

Jporch316 — Wed, 23 Jul 2025 20:33:51 GMT

@BenJoBanjo wrote:
@Jporch316 wrote:
@AlexB12345

Being perfectly honest (and maybe my eyes are too old !) but I have never really noticed any difference between the live showings and "recordings"

if anything my experience has been the opposite and most shows look better to me from a streamed source

I don't really watch a lot on channel 4 so there is that to take into account.
Everything is streamed on Stream & Glass as you well know. It's the difference between the live channel streams vs the on demand versions which is the key here.
Channel 4 for example can look great on the live stream via the EPG on a Stream puck, but stream the shame show on demand via the Channel 4 app and it can look terrible. Compressed, low bit-rates resulting in occasional posterisation. Not good.
A Sky Q recording of a broadcast is always going to look better than that.
The UK broadcasters really need to up their game & improve their apps & their on demand compression. Sky's own content is generally excellent, but then it should be on Sky's own hardware and OS.

I'm not disputing you might have a keen eye for these things but

iPlayer stream ...... fantastic picture through my glass gen 2

sky on demand - I don't currently have uhd pack but again fantastic quality picture

itv x - just binge watched grace - perfect quality to my eyes

U channels - just watched bookish and Chelsea detective - perfect picture

I sometimes think analysing compression and frame rates is a bit of an emperors new clothes syndrome.

But each to their own