topic Suggestion: icons for Soundtrack info (5.1/Atmos) to improve UI in Sky Q

Suggestion: icons for Soundtrack info (5.1/Atmos) to improve UI

mr.tickle — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 20:30:13 GMT

Coming to SkyQ from Sky+HD I was astonished that although icons are now used to indicate UHD, HDR, Audio description and subtitles, they are not yet used to indicate what a programme's soundtrack is. I've made this suggestion in another place, and following that I was encouraged to post it here more publicly to guage people's reaction (now in 2026; I'm sure it's been covered before).

As a brief reminder, here's what the standard Sky/Sky+/Sky+HD EPG shows today. We get the flags for subtitles, widescreen, etc all as text on those systems, and these include "DD" meaning Dolby Digital which in practical terms means 5.1 audio, and "DS" meaning Dolby Surround ie 2.0 audio with Dolby encoding. All good so far!

(Game of Thrones on Sky+HD)

(Hill on Sky+HD)

SkyQ gets the same EPG data and turns it into nice icons. Great! An obvious upgrade, which falls into 3 categories:
(1) Picture parameters. (SD/HD/UHD) (HDR or not)
(2) Accessibility information. (Audio Description/Subtitles)
(3) Soundtrack information - but it is not catered for! That data ("DD"/"DS") is discarded, and not replaced with icons at all.

(Game of Thrones on SkyQ - this has 5.1 audio, but is not shown)

(Hill on SkyQ - this has Dolby Surround, but is not shown)

The only way to find out if a programme has 5.1 audio or only plain stereo is to actually catch it live/record it and listen. I personally feel this is a step backwards, and a bit disappointing because I've always expected this information to be available to me in the EPG, and used it.

For Dolby Atmos soundtracks, a really great feature, this information is appended onto the end of the synopsis as text, even though again there's a gap where naturally the Stereo/5.1/Atmos icon would be shown:

(28 Years Later on SkyQ)

I really feel that giving the (partial) information as text reduces space for other things, looks more cluttered that it could, and it introduces an unnessary "point of friction"; most people expect soundtrack info to be shown as icons these days.

To give some examples of what I'm accustomed to:
This is what Netflix does:

This is what Disney+ does:

This is what Amazon Video does:

Anyway, I'm sure people have seen those before and it's just to show what other interfaces offer!

Important: I'd like to put aside completely how likely/soon this would change - that's not why I started this thread - or to speculate on possible technical reasons that the Sky UI is currently done like this.

Instead, the reason I post this today is the idea purely on its merits alone. To see who agrees it would be a good idea streamline Sky's interfaces in this way, using icons and not text to show Soundtrack info. My view is that it would be a very nice and welcome improvement, without any obvious downsides. Thanks for reading.

Re: Suggestion: icons for Soundtrack info (5.1/Atmos) to improve UI

nigea99 — Tue, 13 Jan 2026 21:42:02 GMT

@mr.tickle Putting aside the fact it I don't think it will ever happen on SKY Q, maybe we will be lucky and SKY Stream does

A few regulars here may know that I find Surround Sound a large part of the experience

Personally I wish that all programmes on all platforms/ apps etc would carry Sound info especially where it might not be obvious.

Once upon a time we could search for Atmos content on SKY Q but that was withdrwan a few years ago - possibly because they were not able to reliably tag the content - I think the tagging has improved again but I don't think all content that has Atmos is labelled.

It is so long since I had SKY HD that I didn't recall DD vs DS

Although one should always remember that Dolby Digital itself does not mean it is 5.1 sound - all HD channels (I think) on SKY Q use DD when probably most are only 2.0 & not 5.1 (some of the apps I think use DD+ again even with 2.0 material)

As an aside I find Amazon prime to be quite bizarre - my (Panasonic) TV Prme Video app & SKY Q Prime app do show icons for 5.1 and Atmos sound (as you have indicated) but neither the web browser version or my Firesticks (an amazon product!) Prime Video apps show any such icons - one would probably have thought that the Amazon products would have it even if non Amazon one didn't (rather than the other way round)

BTW Prime Video has little Atmos although there is some , with plenty 5.1 but also a fair bit of only 2.0

Re: Suggestion: icons for Soundtrack info (5.1/Atmos) to improve UI

mr.tickle — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 09:17:49 GMT

@nigea99 wrote:
A few regulars here may know that I find Surround Sound a large part of the experience

Personally I wish that all programmes on all platforms/ apps etc would carry Sound info especially where it might not be obvious.

Agreed, I think most other platforms do a little better on this score!

@nigea99 wrote:
Once upon a time we could search for Atmos content on SKY Q but that was withdrwan a few years ago - possibly because they were not able to reliably tag the content - I think the tagging has improved again but I don't think all content that has Atmos is labelled.

Interesting - didn't know that. Searching is a "would be nice" for me compared to clearer labelling (ie with icons!!)

@nigea99 wrote:
It is so long since I had SKY HD that I didn't recall DD vs DS

Although one should always remember that Dolby Digital itself does not mean it is 5.1 sound - all HD channels (I think) on SKY Q use DD when probably most are only 2.0 & not 5.1 (some of the apps I think use DD+ again even with 2.0 material)

Yes, indeed DD or DD+ (the codec) doesn't specify the number of channels it's carrying. On Sky+HD it usually means 5.1, but as you say it can vary. Using DD+ instead of DD for 2.0 material just allows even lower bitrates for the same audio quality. And of course various platforms all have issues with mislabelling (Amazon are conspiciously worst IMHO), but that's a separate issue. I'd prefer to tidy up the UI regardless of whether the data's right or not - there will never be 100% perfect data!