topic Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck in Sky Stream

Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

Forestwalker — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 18:24:55 GMT

Is anyone else fed up with the reliability of the Sky Streaming Puck? Mine seems to glitch in someway almost daily. Sometime it freezes, kicks you out of a program, shuts down or refuses to start. Sometimes it will unfreeze itself but usually I have to power cycle the unit. It's now got to the point that I watch Netflix, Prime, Disney and terrestrial channels via my TV and only rely on the Puke for Sky channels.

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

TimmyBGood — Wed, 10 Sep 2025 19:58:35 GMT

@Forestwalker wrote:

Is anyone else fed up with the reliability of the Sky Streaming Puck?

Multiple posts since late 2021 would suggest you're not alone: on the other hand many of us experience none of those symptoms.

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

LukeMarsh — Sun, 14 Sep 2025 20:30:24 GMT

I have to restart my sky puk almost daily, so unreliable, wish I would've read the reviews first before I subscribed to this monstrosity.
What frustrates me more is the fact Sky have turned a blind eye to this, they need to roll something better and updated.

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

Chrisee — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 06:33:20 GMT

@LukeMarsh there are literally millions of these pucks in use and I have 3 myself which only require a restart every few months. There is an issue withyour set up which is causing the necessity to reboot or you have a rogue unit thst needs swapping out

If the pucks are losing connection to your broadband then go into the puck's settings find the start up & standby section and change the settings for remaining network in standby to on and turn off the network power saving both of which helps stop thst fault.

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

Dazzasky — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 10:36:54 GMT

@LukeMarsh wrote:
I have to restart my sky puk almost daily, so unreliable, wish I would've read the reviews first before I subscribed to this monstrosity.
What frustrates me more is the fact Sky have turned a blind eye to this, they need to roll something better and updated.

Have you contacted Sky about this, what did they say? @LukeMarsh

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

Forestwalker — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 11:06:02 GMT

First piece of equipment I have had from them that made me question Sky. Speaks volumes about the new ownership and QC before releasing a product.

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

LukeMarsh — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 11:37:15 GMT

Yep, cheap product, expensive prices, imaging the profit on these are through the roof. I have tried contacting Sky but it's like trying to contact the pope, they just don't want to know.

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

BenJoBanjo — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 11:44:30 GMT

@Forestwalker wrote:
First piece of equipment I have had from them that made me question Sky. Speaks volumes about the new ownership and QC before releasing a product.

What's interesting is that if you look at various international forums in territories using the same hardware, there are many reports of the same sort of issues Sky Stream users have.

The Hubl Hub (Australia), and the Xumo Stream box (USA) both use identical components in a slightly different puck shell, both run a version of Entertainment OS (what Sky has renamed SkyOS) and both run on the same Comcast global streaming platform.

The same sort of issues such as lip sync, apps not loading, blank screens and general poor reliability keep getting repeated by customers. But again, there are many, many customers who are perfectly happy with these boxes and the service they get. If there weren't then Comcast would have to do something about it. There's clearly enough customers who're having a perfectly good time with it and who are happy to pay for it, so there's no need for any immediate change.

As a former Stream customer myself, I too found myself gravitating away from using the puck due to reliability issues. It ended up just being another streaming device, only turned on to watch selected Sky content. That was when we made the decision to switch to NOW on alternative hardware. We get the same Sky content, in the same quality, without any issues.

Personally, I'm thankful to Sky for continuing to offer and improve the NOW streaming service. It allows those of us who don't like the Stream puck hardware to get the content we want on the hardware we want. Those who want the full TV service can continue to get it via a Stream puck... it might be a bit glitchy for some, but it apparently works perfectly well for a great many people.

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

Hunter2660 — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 14:31:52 GMT

@BenJoBanjo wrote:
@Forestwalker wrote:
First piece of equipment I have had from them that made me question Sky. Speaks volumes about the new ownership and QC before releasing a product.
What's interesting is that if you look at various international forums in territories using the same hardware, there are many reports of the same sort of issues Sky Stream users have.
The Hubl Hub (Australia), and the Xumo Stream box (USA) both use identical components in a slightly different puck shell, both run a version of Entertainment OS (what Sky has renamed SkyOS) and both run on the same Comcast global streaming platform.
The same sort of issues such as lip sync, apps not loading, blank screens and general poor reliability keep getting repeated by customers. But again, there are many, many customers who are perfectly happy with these boxes and the service they get. If there weren't then Comcast would have to do something about it. There's clearly enough customers who're having a perfectly good time with it and who are happy to pay for it, so there's no need for any immediate change.
As a former Stream customer myself, I too found myself gravitating away from using the puck due to reliability issues. It ended up just being another streaming device, only turned on to watch selected Sky content. That was when we made the decision to switch to NOW on alternative hardware. We get the same Sky content, in the same quality, without any issues.
Personally, I'm thankful to Sky for continuing to offer and improve the NOW streaming service. It allows those of us who don't like the Stream puck hardware to get the content we want on the hardware we want. Those who want the full TV service can continue to get it via a Stream puck... it might be a bit glitchy for some, but it apparently works perfectly well for a great many people.

It works perfectly well for me, no issues. If it didn't I would've gone down the Now with Apple TV and TV Launcher app route. Provides pretty much the same experience, all be it without cloud recording, and slower channel selection.

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

BenJoBanjo — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 14:49:47 GMT

@Hunter2660 wrote:
It works perfectly well for me, no issues. If it didn't I would've gone down the Now with Apple TV and TV Launcher app route. Provides pretty much the same experience, all be it without cloud recording, and slower channel selection.

tvOS is what we use all the time now. We don't watch sport and have no need for cloud recording. We set our own viewing schedules by adding shows to our watchlist, including Sky shows via the NOW app, to watch whenever we want and have never had an issue with the Apple hardware.

That's the positive thing to take from all this - there are plenty of options offered by Sky to get their programming.

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

Forestwalker — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 15:00:50 GMT

Thanks Like, will give it a try. Bit weird that overnight power save has an influence on the programming but 🤷‍♂️

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

HoundofCulaine — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 13:46:34 GMT

This is the second puck I've recieved. And that took a 2 hour phonecall to convince their support representativeto replace it.

I'm disabled, so unable to get to the device myself, so have to wait until other family members are available to pull the damn power cable out to restart it. It's a blooming joke (can you tell i want to swear properly but know on these forums that the comment would properly be pulled).

I shouldn't have to use my TVs free services when I'm paying £140+ a month for Sky! And this is the only device they now offer. Way to lose customers, because I'm literally this close to binning them.

Are they even looking to a more professional manufacturer who uses more reliable components?!?! These packs are a joke.

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

TimmyBGood — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 18:23:28 GMT

@HoundofCulaine wrote:

I shouldn't have to use my TVs free services when I'm paying £140+ a month for Sky! And this is the only device they now offer. Way to lose customers, because I'm literally this close to binning them.

Sky Q over a satellite dish is still a product.

Are they even looking to a more professional manufacturer who uses more reliable components?!?! These packs are a joke.

Stream pucks are specifically made for Sky to their own specification: there recently been a hardware revision although this isn't a 'new' model.

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

Antb73 — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 18:39:29 GMT

Got mine today and initially I was really impressed.

After 4 freezes and complete crashes and reboots I've now come to the conclusion this hardware is a pile of do do's. What really is wrong with these multi billion a year earning companies investing in decent hardware to feed us their content?

I'll say it again like I've said many times before, no wonder people get their content by other means.

I really can't get my head around why hardware is so rubbish. This thing in principle is great. It just cannot keep up though. Too many button pushes in quick concession makes it freeze and reboot.

Love the menus and masses of content, hate the way it's given to us in this sub standard box.

Is Glass the same? Does it crash and freeze like the puck?

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

Chrisee — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 15:34:53 GMT

@Antb73 having been using the pucks since launch I find them stable and reliable. The number one cause of instability is poor wifi connection. Go into the settings and find Network open thst and it will give you a guide ideally it should read as excellent. The Netflix app Get Help menu contains a useful network test which will show the speed the app can access ideally thst should be around 50Mb/s.

Do not assume just because you have fast broadband at your router that it folows WiFi in your home will be fast itsimoly doesnt follow.

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

Forestwalker — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 15:44:31 GMT

Some food for thought there. Mine has gone from unstable to buffering (principally on Netflix). Come ot of the program and go straight back in and it's fine. It's almost as if it is not getting am acknowledgement to some data being received so doesn't get any more. I can go way nerdy on this as I was a data comms engineer working on IP, ATM, IP over ATM, blar blar.

Oh, also my puke is cabled not but I do only have a 63MB Internet connection (and run a B&B so they often pinch bandwidth 🙄)

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

Antb73 — Sun, 30 Nov 2025 15:52:59 GMT

Hi, thanks for your response. My puck is connected via Ethernet so WiFi doesn't come into it.

I am however pleased to say, since I followed someone else's advice on here by turning off the standby power saving settings and making sure the puck stays connected during standby, I haven't had a single crash. Go figure 🤷🏼😂

I've not had Sky since the SkyHD days having been with Virgin Media, and I dumped them months ago.

I used an Nvidia Shield and a NAS for my content but really wanted something that brought a lot of the services together under one roof so to speak, without being entirely tied to a provider.

Sky Stream has allowed me to do this. How long

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

Isla78 — Sat, 17 Jan 2026 20:44:09 GMT

I swapped to sky a few months ago and find exactly the same issue.

Everything else works apart from running programs via the puk.

I've got a replacement one on the way, but suspect it won't help

Re: Fed up with reliability of Sky Puck

Isla78 — Sat, 07 Feb 2026 21:28:16 GMT

Its absolute garbage.

Do I really have to put up with this rubbish for 2 years ?