topic Re: Sky Steam is horrible in Sky Stream

Sky Steam is horrible

Maggsy1 — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 18:53:37 GMT

I have 2 Sky Pucks both of which crash and freeze.

My internet is pulling 300mb so before anyone says the normal boring WIFI connection issues please save it. On Netflix tests it's running at 280mb and my Firestick works perfectly.

I have great WiFi coverage and have one puck connected via ethrenet.

I feel the Sky OS software is just a pile of utter garbage. Why does it crash and freeze so much and don't get me started on the lip sync issues.

Please can someone escalate my complaint to Sky and send me 2 x new pucks. I wish I could just have Sky Q and multi room.

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

TimmyBGood — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 19:38:16 GMT

@Maggsy1 wrote:

Please can someone escalate my complaint to Sky and send me 2 x new pucks.

Escalation isn't currently available. You'll need to negotiate hardware swap-out yourself.

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

Maggsy1 — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 19:55:04 GMT

Ok - please explain why Sky Stream is coded so badly and why the pucks hardware is so cheaply made?

Why does for example My4 stream and work perfectly on my fire stick or smart TV yet crash and stall and have lip sync errors constantly on the puck?

Sky Stream is not fit for purpose - prove me wrong......

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

mikealanr — Wed, 01 Oct 2025 20:23:02 GMT

@Maggsy1

Given we are fellow customers no one here can give you the answers you are after. However environmental factors seem to really affect sky glass and stream. I've got 4 pucks and 2 glass units and they are largely trouble free.

You can make a complaint to sky if your not happy with your service. https://www.sky.com/help/articles/how-to-make-a-complaint

MikeAlanR

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

TimmyBGood — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 06:54:28 GMT

@Maggsy1 wrote:

Sky Stream is not fit for purpose - prove me wrong......

Mine work. Presumably many hundreds of thousands also do elsewhere, or this forum would be a lot busier. Given Stream has been around for four years this month, the wider media (and the owners of channels distributed on the platform) might have noticed if they generally didn't function.

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

BenJoBanjo — Thu, 02 Oct 2025 09:30:02 GMT

@Maggsy1

Sky Stream works well (or well enough) for a great many people but if, like me, you feel it's substandard, it's very easy to get a good, reliable, fully streamed TV service elsewhere.
It's handy that Sky also offer all their channels and on demand content via the NOW app - I find that it's much more reliable on various devices I use and the watchlist feature on Apple's tvOS hardware does exactly the same thing as the playlist on SkyOS.
Sky Stream is great if you watch a lot of live TV & like to channel hop (and you can get it to work on your home broadband network) but if you don't or can't then it's easy to get Sky and all other content on alternative hardware.

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

Maggsy1 — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 07:46:20 GMT

Hi,

Thanks for the responses, [Removed]

In regards to moving to Now Tv are you going to buy me out the remaining 22 months of my contract? Thought not

Sky stream is terrible and Sky need to sort the hardware and OS out asap. You carry on blaming the WIFI and "environmental conditions" as much as you want. [Removed]

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

Andylufc — Fri, 03 Oct 2025 15:15:56 GMT

In my opinion I think it all depends on which isp you have.....I use 5g broadband and when i first got it in February of this year I had 10 days of channels freezing, black screen with "sorry can't load this programme " and basically have to unplug the box about 5 times a day...that was using 02 sim in my router....switched to Three and ive not had a problem since.

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

BenJoBanjo — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 09:02:28 GMT

@Maggsy1 wrote:
Hi,

Thanks for the responses, [Removed]

In regards to moving to Now Tv are you going to buy me out the remaining 22 months of my contract? Thought not

Sky stream is terrible and Sky need to sort the hardware and OS out asap. You carry on blaming the WIFI and "environmental conditions" as much as you want. [Removed]

You don't need to buy yourself out of your long term contract.
If Stream doesn't work sufficiently well enough, as advertised, for you then let Sky know. Follow their troubleshooting and if it still doesn't work well enough they will release you penalty free from any long term streaming contract. They know fully well that Stream works badly for some people and simply cannot hold you to a contract when you have done everything you can to try and improve it. There are simply too many variables in every customer's broadband network to make the service guaranteed rock solid.

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

TimmyBGood — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 09:48:38 GMT

@Maggsy1

As @BenJoBanjo indicates, the business model for Glass and Stream is fundamentally different to the historic satellite platforms. In the absence of 'engineers' to resolve problems, Sky cannot insist on contract enforcement.

The key is to state, politely but firmly, that the product/service hasn't been as described / of satisfactory quality / fit for purpose in your particular case and the vendor hasn't taken adequate steps to resolve the situation.

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

Silvermanz — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 09:47:10 GMT

Had loads of trouble with mine freezing up watching stuff and I have gigabit wifi speeds and the router is about 6 feet away from the TV.

Try moving the sky box, I literally moved it from the shelf underneath the TV cabinet by about 1 foot to next to the TV on top of the cabinet and it's never happened since.

I'm guessing very cheap or badly designed WiFi components inside that puck thing.

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

MarkGoldsmith — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 10:13:30 GMT

@Silvermanz wrote:
Had loads of trouble with mine freezing up watching stuff and I have gigabit wifi speeds and the router is about 6 feet away from the TV.
Try moving the sky box, I literally moved it from the shelf underneath the TV cabinet by about 1 foot to next to the TV on top of the cabinet and it's never happened since.

I'm guessing very cheap or badly designed WiFi components inside that puck thing.

So the puck isn't as effective on an enclosed shelf of a TV cabinet via WiFI as the cabinet will cause some WiFi signal interference and the Sky streaming platform is very susceptible to fluctuations in the internet connectivity.

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

Silvermanz — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 10:26:56 GMT

Of course you can expect walls, enclosed areas etc to affect WiFi strength to an extent but given that I connect to my WiFi on my phone about 100 meters down the road when I drive home from work surely 2cm of wooden cabinet 6 foot from the router shouldn't be enough to render the device practically unusable.

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

MarkGoldsmith — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 10:54:17 GMT

@Silvermanz wrote:
Of course you can expect walls, enclosed areas etc to affect WiFi strength to an extent but given that I connect to my WiFi on my phone about 100 meters down the road when I drive home from work surely 2cm of wooden cabinet 6 foot from the router shouldn't be enough to render the device practically unusable.

Phones and most devices can cope with things like dropped network packets so therefore network instability doesn't affect them as much. The big difference with these devices is that little processing is done from the devices themselves and most operations require remote running from Sky servers. Essentially if that connection to Skys servers gets broken the devices practically crash until you reboot them.

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

Jporch316 — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 11:36:52 GMT

To the opening poster @Maggsy1

have you requested a replacement puck? As with all electronic items there can be defective units ......

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

Silvermanz — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 12:42:13 GMT

Still, I'm with the original poster.

After a year of use I can't say I'm impressed with sky stream, I've found it unreliable in multiple areas.

Not massively so, but enough that I see it as a downgrade from normal dish based sky and something I'll be getting rid of once the contract ends.

Too many little bugs that keep appearing here and there, a streaming device that can't handle slight interruptions to it's connection without needing the user to reboot the system or spend ages troubleshooting, various audio issues etc.

It needs to be much more reliable if this is how they expect people to watch TV in the future.

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

BenJoBanjo — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 13:05:45 GMT

@Silvermanz wrote:

It needs to be much more reliable if this is how they expect people to watch TV in the future.

100%. Four years on and it's still not something I'd be happy paying for. I gave it a year, but even a half price deal wasn't enough of a sweetener to keep me as a subscriber.
Watching TV should be a reliable, pleasurable experience, not a randomly frustrating one.

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

TimmyBGood — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 13:16:38 GMT

@Silvermanz wrote:

Not massively so, but enough that I see it as a downgrade from normal dish based sky and something I'll be getting rid of once the contract ends.

It's likely that 'normal dish based sky' won't be broadcast to the UK and Ireland past the end of this decade: sales of the satellite product will presumably end in the next couple of years to allow for minimum terms to end before the service disappears.

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

Silvermanz — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 13:43:42 GMT

I can't see that going well for sky unless they seriously invest in reliability.

I can watch Disney or Netflix all day long through my 7 year old smart TVs built in interface without a hitch.

Everything works perfectly, I press play on a show and it just plays. Every time.

I've never had to turn my TV off and on again 4 times mid movie or spend my entire Saturday afternoon troubleshooting an error message or sound issue.

I just don't see people accepting this as the future of TV

Re: Sky Steam is horrible

Hunter2660 — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 14:08:01 GMT

And yet I've had the service for 20 months and I've had little to no problems throughout. It's curious why some people have so many problems, and the rest of us don't!!