topic Re: Improve home page experience in Sky Stream

Improve home page experience

Johnty+Tizzle — Sun, 07 Jan 2024 17:28:50 GMT

Can sky improve the home page on stream?

when you want the tv guide it needs to go straight to the tv guide not suggest things to start from the start. I accidentally keep pressing watch from start. I can't be the only one?

when the large white writing comes up with movies, sports etc they need to change the colour of the one it lands on?

Re: Improve home page experience

Grytpype — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 09:31:13 GMT

I quite agree with you. I've only started using Sky Stream this week and already it's annoying. I don't want to be bombarded with shows Sky thinks I ought to be watching, I get enough of that with individual channel trailers. I'd rather it default to the last channel I was watching before it was switched off.

Sky, please take notice and give us better customisation.

Re: Improve home page experience

Anonymous — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 09:32:36 GMT

@Johnty+Tizzle wrote:
Can sky improve the home page on stream?

when you want the tv guide it needs to go straight to the tv guide not suggest things to start from the start. I accidentally keep pressing watch from start. I can't be the only one?

when the large white writing comes up with movies, sports etc they need to change the colour of the one it lands on?

Is there an accessibilty option in settings on a Stream box? I've enabled it on our Q box just to make it more legible.

Re: Improve home page experience

MarkGoldsmith — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 09:47:20 GMT

@Grytpype wrote:
I quite agree with you. I've only started using Sky Stream this week and already it's annoying. I don't want to be bombarded with shows Sky thinks I ought to be watching, I get enough of that with individual channel trailers. I'd rather it default to the last channel I was watching before it was switched off.

Sky, please take notice and give us better customisation.

The longer you use the system the more the recommendations actually become tailored based on what you have watched therefore becoming much more relevant.

it does become useful when it flags that a new season/episode of a show you have watched before is now available without you have to trawl through the playlist to identify that.

Re: Improve home page experience

Grytpype — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 10:10:16 GMT

Thanks for your replies everyone. I guess it's like everything else that's new and different, it'll take time to get used to it.

I've looked in settings but there's nothing really helpful. I've altered the connect to network overnight and power saving options, so I'll see how that goes. Thanks for your help.

Re: Improve home page experience

Jporch316 — Sat, 24 Feb 2024 15:21:21 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:
@Johnty+Tizzle wrote:
Can sky improve the home page on stream?

when you want the tv guide it needs to go straight to the tv guide not suggest things to start from the start. I accidentally keep pressing watch from start. I can't be the only one?

when the large white writing comes up with movies, sports etc they need to change the colour of the one it lands on?
Is there an accessibilty option in settings on a Stream box? I've enabled it on our Q box just to make it more legible.

Yes there is an accessibility option on glass and stream and I have it turned on as the background is a rather nice black and makes a change from the blue screen

Re: Improve home page experience

andie1979 — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 11:16:37 GMT

I'm very disappointed with sky glass, just simple things like the home page are so frustrating, I want the TV to be on ny default not a home page suggesting stuff, the remote design is poor also, been a sky customer for so long i'm used to my channel up down been on the right side but now thats the volume.

sky stream also so poor, every 3rd episode or so while I try forward ads of a series I have on my playlist it stops, then freezes, i need to then plug it out to get it back to home, even trying to go into an app the same frozen screen is showed, playlist is not as good as record, everything seems to stream, not even the current episode seems to be downloaded.

Re: Improve home page experience

Padam_Padam — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 11:23:35 GMT

@andie1979 wrote:
I'm very disappointed with sky glass, just simple things like the home page are so frustrating, I want the TV to be on ny default not a home page suggesting stuff, the remote design is poor also, been a sky customer for so long i'm used to my channel up down been on the right side but now thats the volume.

sky stream also so poor, every 3rd episode or so while I try forward ads of a series I have on my playlist it stops, then freezes, i need to then plug it out to get it back to home, even trying to go into an app the same frozen screen is showed, playlist is not as good as record, everything seems to stream, not even the current episode seems to be downloaded.

Nothing is downloaded to Sky Glass. It's a streaming TV with no on-board storage.

Re: Improve home page experience

andie1979 — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 12:02:11 GMT

I knew it was a streaming service but I expected it the performance to be better, even the way forwarding works in the apps like Netflix it doesn't allow you to move forward as quick, Netflix has always performed well when it comes to skipping a head, yet Sky can't seem to manage the same performance,, I miss the info button, when I go onto a channel or a movie I have to wait a few seconds before I can hit select to see what I'm watching, what it's about and how long started it is, the watch from the start option gets in the way. I mean what clever person put voice activation on the actual Tv, it only works if the TV is on mute, so hands free is pretty useless unless you get up and go right up to the TV and say hello sky mute volume, then you can use hands free.

Re: Improve home page experience

TimmyBGood — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 12:28:20 GMT

@andie1979 wrote:

I mean what clever person put voice activation on the actual Tv, it only works if the TV is on mute,

I'd suggest most users don't find that's the case, but obviously loud speaker output will tend to overpower distant input.

The main issue with attempting to put hands-free control on the remote (aside from the physical space required for additional silicon and a better microphone array) is it would destroy battery life.

Re: Improve home page experience

Jporch316 — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 12:34:31 GMT

I tend to use the voice control on the remote rather than the tv .......

In also think the remote is one of the better designed remotes

Re: Improve home page experience

Padam_Padam — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 13:09:19 GMT

@andie1979 wrote:
I knew it was a streaming service but I expected it the performance to be better, even the way forwarding works in the apps like Netflix it doesn't allow you to move forward as quick, Netflix has always performed well when it comes to skipping a head, yet Sky can't seem to manage the same performance,, I miss the info button, when I go onto a channel or a movie I have to wait a few seconds before I can hit select to see what I'm watching, what it's about and how long started it is, the watch from the start option gets in the way. I mean what clever person put voice activation on the actual Tv, it only works if the TV is on mute, so hands free is pretty useless unless you get up and go right up to the TV and say hello sky mute volume, then you can use hands free.

The sluggish performance which some customers notice is down to Sky's streaming platform being entirely server based. This creates added latency or nanoseconds of delay between pressing a button and something happening on screen. Very little of the whole Sky Glass/Stream operating system and UI is stored on the device itself, so it can, to some customers, feel slower than other devices they own.
Once you get used to the speed of navigation and perhaps using voice control to fast forward or rewind, it can function pretty well, but a stream is never going to be as fast to control as a recording on a local hard drive.

Re: Improve home page experience

andie1979 — Sun, 09 Jun 2024 13:43:08 GMT

Thanks for your reply,

I understand completely the difference certainly between the physical and streaming, in fairness Netflix is the best streaming service when it comes to performance and I've got all the UK available platforms like Disney, Amazon, Netflix etc and none are as slick as Netflix but even trying to forward Netflix I see issues compared to the app on sky q, it's got to be the remote, it doesn't allow me to speed up the fast forward x6 x30 etc on glass, I don't understand why they had to mess with the remotes, Sky have tried to release a streaming only service I get that, but they need to realise people who go for it are not just going because it's streaming only, it's the new TV, sky built in etc, that people are going for too, so to think only younger more streamer type users will be going for this service is wrong, and it's clear from the changes that a more older user who might be convinced into taking a tv package might struggle with the changes, removing the channel up and down button, not turning on to the tv channel or last thing you were doing when tv went off, this is more how a computer or tablet might function. I've a 1GB Virgin line plugged directly into my tv yet as you mentioned I will still have issues with trying to move forward, you'd think they would download and cache the current episode of the series your watching to make sure at least that performs at its best.