topic Re: Feature Requests in Sky Stream

Feature Requests

MarkS2 — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 12:26:43 GMT

I've had Sky Stream for a couple of days and basically like it but some improvments jump out:

Move "continue watching" into playlist profiles so household users can't change the position of other's programmes or see what they're watching. This would de-clutter each user's playlists too.
Allow different play points in the same programme to be saved for each user in their profile.
Add a list view option for playlists, like the recordings screen on Sky+ and Virgin so more is visible without scrolling
Add a manual flag for things I've watched so I don't start watching the same thing again until realising halfway in (I'm getting old and watch too many quiz shows!). This feature would also be attached to the profile.
Add a filter for watched/not watched items in playlists so I have the option of only seeing what I haven't watched.
Allow me to manually remove items from the continue watching ribbon in my profile.

Some of these might be difficult given how reliant Sky Stream is on 3rd party apps but the profiles feature seems very basic and more work is needed. Sky would do well to make the experience a bit closer to a DVR where possible and this would make it easier to move from Sky+/Tivo to the streaming world. Music apps like Spotify and Roon do this much better.

Re: Feature Requests

Jporch316 — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 12:29:58 GMT

@MarkS2

Good suggestions all of which have been raised previously

I know @Fothergill1 is championing changes to the continue watching rail ....

I've been trying my best to get the profiles more streamlined ....

Re: Feature Requests

Fothergill1 — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 14:03:53 GMT

Hi @MarkS2 and welcome to the forum/streaming. As @Jporch316 says I have been complaining about the Continue Watching rail for over a year. Some of your suggestions are things I had not thought of but are pretty good ideas.

My main concerns are that there is no way to remove unwanted items from the CW rail and items we have watched (sometimes months ago) just randomly appear in the rail again. My other gripe is that programmes in the playlist keep losing the blue progress bar after a couple of week so when you go back to continue a series you don't know which was the last episode we watched. These are both thinks you have also identified.

If you type Continue Watching into the search bar at the top of this page you will see numerous threads on the subject. In particular have a look at my post at the following link where I have detailed some ways of removing unwanted programmes. Even with these methods it can be a frustrating experience and some programmes just stubbornly remain. Deleting from Continue Watching

Good luck.

cc @Deedee36 - see OP above for some good CW/Playlist ideas.

Re: Feature Requests

MarkS2 — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 14:15:38 GMT

@Fothergill1 Thanks for the info and reply. I hope Sky takes on board some of our suggestions although as some of these have been unanswered for months, it doesn't inspire much hope.

Re: Feature Requests

Fothergill1 — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 14:26:09 GMT

@MarkS2 Your welcome. I am aware from the closed forum that Sky are looking into the question of removing unwanted programmes but unfortunately they have been doing so for some time and there is still no time frame. It's just a question of patience I suppose 😫

Re: Feature Requests

Jporch316 — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 14:50:58 GMT

And the playlist is a complicated old thing drawing data from many sources (unlike say the Netflix app playlist) ......

Re: Feature Requests

Jporch316 — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 20:19:29 GMT

@Fothergill1

I've been thinking ........

maybe sky should ditch the continue watching rail altogether and have a "pinned" rail. On this rail you could choose any 10 shows from your playlist and "pin" them to it.

once you've finished the show you then simply "unpin" it ......

Re: Feature Requests

Fothergill1 — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 00:49:58 GMT

@Jporch316 wrote:
@Fothergill1
I've been thinking ........

maybe sky should ditch the continue watching rail altogether and have a "pinned" rail. On this rail you could choose any 10 shows from your playlist and "pin" them to it.

once you've finished the show you then simply "unpin" it ......

@Jporch316 Maybe something like that would work as a temporary measure whilst they are sorting out the issues 🤷‍♂️

The problem is when the CW rail is working properly it's brilliant. Not only does it shows your part watched programmes but is also populated by new episodes of programmes in your playlist when they are broadcast.

However, this brings its own problem as when you remove something from your playlist the new episodes still keep appearing each week on the rail. BBC iPlayer and ITVX are terrible for this and even gives you the new episodes if you simply asked a previous episode to "watch from start".

The main problem is there is no way to remove unwanted programmes. If this was possible the issues mentioned above would be simply resolved.

Re: Feature Requests

nmbailey — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 09:48:19 GMT

I gave up with the Watching rail. Instead, I have a Playlist which I just call 'Watching'. I add programmes / series to it then remove them when we've finished.

Re: Feature Requests

Fothergill1 — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 11:13:24 GMT

@nmbailey wrote:
I gave up with the Watching rail. Instead, I have a Playlist which I just call 'Watching'. I add programmes / series to it then remove them when we've finished.

@nmbailey That's an interesting idea and I have just created a Watching profile to experiment with . Amongst the obvious playlists I also have one which I call Future where I put programmes that have finished airing but I want a reminder to check for the next series.

Sky Q Future & Sky Stream Wish List

1964+Shot — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 13:01:39 GMT

Sky wants to move away from satellite to internet TV. See following article containing news of redundancies, mainly satellite engineers.

https://www.ft.com/content/4b9056ef-cc21-4c6b-b7ff-4d5f2ae786a6

It is really pushing Sky Stream. Look at the Sky Home page and Sky Stream is front and centre. Though, it is accepting new Sky Q customers.

https://www.sky.com/

I found the following article that predicts a road map to Sky Q being closed by early 2026.

https://www.cable.co.uk/blogs/is-sky-q-being-phased-out-20231116/

Ideally, I would like the following improvements before Sky Q is potentially closed.

The quality of the Sky Stream box to be much closer to the quality of Apple TV or failing that launch the Sky Stream App on Apple TV.

Much more stable software. For example, Discovery Plus wasn’t working for a few days on Sky Stream recently.

Remove reliance of BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 apps so the service is seamless without going off into other providers apps when streaming previously broadcast programmes and ensure the quality / format of the picture and sound is as originally broadcast as is the situation now with Sky Q recordings.

Ensure programmes finished on a live basis are always available much more quickly than now i.e. within 10 minutes rather than having to say wait a day.

Much shortened delay of live broadcast compared to Sky Q, say 10 second max - important for live news and sport. Currently, its 30 seconds which I think is too much.

There may be other improvements forum members can think of?

Re: Sky Q Future & Sky Stream Wish List

MarkGoldsmith — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 13:34:57 GMT

@1964+Shot wrote:
Sky wants to move away from satellite to internet TV. See following article containing news of redundancies, mainly satellite engineers.

https://www.ft.com/content/4b9056ef-cc21-4c6b-b7ff-4d5f2ae786a6

It is really pushing Sky Stream. Look at the Sky Home page and Sky Stream is front and centre. Though, it is accepting new Sky Q customers.

https://www.sky.com/

I found the following article that predicts a road map to Sky Q being closed by early 2026.

https://www.cable.co.uk/blogs/is-sky-q-being-phased-out-20231116/

Ideally, I would like the following improvements before Sky Q is potentially closed.

The quality of the Sky Stream box to be much closer to the quality of Apple TV or failing that launch the Sky Stream App on Apple TV.

Much more stable software. For example, Discovery Plus wasn’t working for a few days on Sky Stream recently.

Remove reliance of BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 apps so the service is seamless without going off into other providers apps when streaming previously broadcast programmes and ensure the quality / format of the picture and sound is as originally broadcast as is the situation now with Sky Q recordings.

Ensure programmes finished on a live basis are always available much more quickly than now i.e. within 10 minutes rather than having to say wait a day.

Much shortened delay of live broadcast compared to Sky Q, say 10 second max - important for live news and sport. Currently, its 30 seconds which I think is too much.

There may be other improvements forum members can think of?

@1964+Shot

I suspect a lot of that is unrealistic unfortunately.

Apple TV is expensive premium hardware, a market Sky aren't targetting. The Stream pucks are designed to be fairly cheap, mass produced products to increase the affordability. Whilst i agree they could have slightly improved hardware, it shouldn't be forgotten that the stream pucks do very little processing themselves, with the majority of processing happening on Sky's remote servers, so the need for more premium hardware isn't as big for the pucks themselves.

I suspect a Sky Stream App to also be unlikely, as Sky already have that sort of app available through NOW TV or Sky Go, a way of watching Sky channels and on-demand content via an app. Sky see themselves as a content aggregator, which is the reason they have still hardware (Glass/Stream) as a way to help aggregator content and subscriptions from multiple streaming services in one place. They can't be an aggreggator is they just had Now TV/Sky Go app that could only broadcast Sky content.

The issue with the third party apps is also a hard one to solve, as Sky don't control the app being provided. So issues raised for a particularly app (like the recent discovery + issue you mentioned) requires Sky to collate as much information as possible and raise it with discovery +, but ultimately also requires discovery + to engage with the investigation and potentially fix the bug in the code for the app they provide to be run on Sky's platform.

The removal of reliance of broadcasters apps, i suspect to get increase rather than decrease. The broadcasters want traffic going to their apps. So therefore they would be increasingly demanding that these type of catch up services offering by companies like Sky, do indeed link to their own streaming apps. More traffic via their own apps would increase the advertising revenue some of the commerical apps could generate, and it also provides much more useful, and up to date metrics to the broadcasters on which shows are popular and how many views/streams they actually have.

The delay in uploading content after broadcast, again would be down to the individual broadcasters and how long it takes for them to make the content available post broadcast on their streaming app. Most broadcasters seem to be quite good at making shows available almost immediately, one that does tend to get on my nerves a bit with delays sometimes is ITV and ITV X, but that does seem to be improving.

I agree the delay with sports streaming could and should be improved. I could be wrong but i believe the delay as already been shorten compared with when the streaming platform first launched and i'm fairly certainly they will be working on reducing the delay evern more.

Re: Sky Q Future & Sky Stream Wish List

TimmyBGood — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 14:09:00 GMT

@1964+Shot wrote:

Remove reliance of BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 apps so the service is seamless without going off into other providers apps when streaming previously broadcast programmes

That's simply not possible for Sky to implement without the full cooperation of those channels, which they aren't going to give when they all have their own app infrastructure to push (and in the case of the BBC in particular, justify Licence Fee spending)

Given those are all PSB providers any such move could realistically only come at the insistence of Ofcom, which is extremely unlikely.

Re: Sky Q Future & Sky Stream Wish List

Jones_The_Cat — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 15:09:39 GMT

@1964+Shot wrote:

Ideally, I would like the following improvements before Sky Q is potentially closed.

The quality of the Sky Stream box to be much closer to the quality of Apple TV or failing that launch the Sky Stream App on Apple TV.

A Stream puck could be purchased for just £20 when the service launched back in October 2022.

An Apple TV 4K box costs £149 for the base model.

Sky simply cannot mass produce a Stream puck to the same spec (or even close to the same spec) as the Apple device.

They are very different streaming products anyway. Sky Stream operates using server-based apps and no local storage. Apple TV hardware has fast on-board flash storage to allow the user to choose which apps to download and install, and to speed up the streaming experience overall.

Sky would need to completely redesign and reconfigure their whole streaming operation, as well as the hardware, in order to get close to what Apple provide. It's simply not going to happen.

There's more likelihood of them offering 4K HDR streams on the NOW app on Apple TV (and other devices) with the addition of a new tier of Boost. That would give them an extra revenue stream from those who prefer to use alternative hardware and have no need for a full EPG, playlist or live channel streams. They've been charging extra for simple HD for far too long as it is. They need to get with the times and offer UHD to those who want it via NOW.

Re: Sky Q Future & Sky Stream Wish List

TimmyBGood — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 15:50:13 GMT

@Jones_The_Cat wrote:

@1964+Shot wrote:

Ideally, I would like the following improvements before Sky Q is potentially closed.

The quality of the Sky Stream box to be much closer to the quality of Apple TV or failing that launch the Sky Stream App on Apple TV.

A Stream puck could be purchased for just £20 when the service launched back in October 2022.

An Apple TV 4K box costs £149 for the base model.

Sky simply cannot mass produce a Stream puck to the same spec (or even close to the same spec) as the Apple device.

I agree: even given the traditionally very generous manufacturing profit margin which Apple loves so much, it's probable that an ATV4K comes in at a minimum of £75 - £100 to build. I've even seen it suggested that they are a rare instance of Apple being prepared to slash their margin (or, whisper it, take a loss) on hardware in order to earn from longer-term subscription and service sales instead.

Re: Feature Requests

Samson13 — Fri, 09 Feb 2024 21:01:15 GMT

I've only just started but I can see immediately this is decade's behind in it's user interface. Not having actual profiles for each person is just backwards. The lack of being able to use the playlists on anything but the TV renders them null and void too. There's only one TV in the house so people watch on tablets etc and you can't access even the caveman level playlists from there.

Honestly how difficult would it be to actually just implement proper profiles with their own saved playing positions. I'm guessing not that hard since every other streaming service seems to have them.

My dad has begun watching game of thrones and I'm stuck with the option of confusing him by restarting it or waiting until he's entirely finished if I want to watch it. What idiot thought that was a good way to do things?

Sky is the most expensive of all the TV packages, I didn't expect it to also be the most prehistoric in functionality.

Re: Feature Requests

mikeywright — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 19:04:59 GMT

I'm particularly interested in being able to add to a playlist when away from the tv. It would make sense to do it through the sky go app. Many times I've been recommended a show out and about but then not able to add it for later

Re: Feature Requests

Fothergill1 — Wed, 11 Mar 2026 20:35:30 GMT

@mikeywright wrote:
I'm particularly interested in being able to add to a playlist when away from the tv. It would make sense to do it through the sky go app. Many times I've been recommended a show out and about but then not able to add it for later

Hi @mikeywright Not that it matters but this is a very old thread with the last post being over 2 years ago. With regards to being able to remotely add to your playlist I can't imagine it will ever be an option as it is not really necessary. Just add it to your playlist when you get home. Thats the benefit of the streaming platform over having to record programmes.

If you are worried that you might forget the relevant details just make a note of them. An email to my own inbox works for me 😀

Re: Feature Requests

Dazzasky — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 08:34:40 GMT

@mikeywright wrote:
I'm particularly interested in being able to add to a playlist when away from the tv. It would make sense to do it through the sky go app. Many times I've been recommended a show out and about but then not able to add it for later

Excellent idea, maybe one day we will be able to. @mikeywright

Re: Feature Requests

TimmyBGood — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 18:39:56 GMT

@mikeywright wrote:

I'm particularly interested in being able to add to a playlist when away from the tv. It would make sense to do it through the sky go app.

The current Go app will almost certainly never do that: it's a legacy from before 2018 when Sky was an independent company (and is essentially what was previously the Q app with a facelift ; )

Glass/Stream is a Comcast platform, and app interaction with it would need to use the Comcast software stack. There's a well established Comcast streaming app in the US, and I suspect that will replace Go once satellite broadcasting reaches end-of-life.