Many problems with Sky glass

[Neilferret]

We still have occasional problems.  Nothing whatsoever to do with our incoming bandwidth. We have 1gbps of broadband with both Wi-Fi delivering in excess of 500mbps in every room and a solid Ethernet installation using cat6a.    The updates have been good and Sky replaced all our PUKS, which now work 98% of the time, perfectly.   Sometimes PUKS say no network, in a room that has a Peloton bike / tread, both showing in excess of 500mbps !  Then remarkably the PUKS work, only to fail again.  Reboot and they are absolutely fine. 

My continuing issue is with lip sync on the glass.  It permanently gets worse the longer you view a channel.  Starting at probably being out by 2 frames, drifting to up to 10 frames a second.  Changing channels and then back again brings sync back to being nearly correct but never exact.  Sorry, was a tv Director and cannot bear lip sync being out. For Glastonbury it was appalling !  Permanently changing channels to get lip sync close to being right 

Other than lip sync, I am much happier now with glass and puk.   Come on sky, address the lip sync, please !

[Chrisee]

@PhilQornot2q if anyone has a faulty TV they have a far more simple claim under the Consumer Rights Act against the seller Sky - section 75 is useful if the orginal trader is out of business etc as you can proceed against the credit provider but given Sky are both it doesn't apply here. In practice Sky seem quite good at sorting complaints so you are unlikely to have to go to court..

Sky have said they will sell the pucks as stand alone units sometime this year. Like you I mainly watch using the pucks but mine are stable and work reasonably well. There are irritations with the OS but sfter 6 months I have learnt how to live with them. My Glass TV also works as it should so perhaps you have a bad example?

[stereohaven]

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@Neilferret wrote:

We still have occasional problems.  Nothing whatsoever to do with our incoming bandwidth. We have 1gbps of broadband with both Wi-Fi delivering in excess of 500mbps in every room and a solid Ethernet installation using cat6a.   

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Which is great for you, but it puts you in quite the minority in terms of networking knowledge, hardware and connection speed/quality.

If you add "occasional problems" to a lower bandwidth internet connection and a single ISP supplied router struggling to serve multiple devices all on WiFi, you get the poor experience that Sky Glass is for many, no matter how many updates to the TV or Pucks are made.

There are some fundamentals you need to have in place to enjoy even a basic experience. 

[Neilferret]

Understand, of course.  My only point is that even with blistering network availability, the Sky Glass and PUKS sill have issues.   Bearing in mind that I have the Peloton Bike, Peloton tread and Peloton Guide that all require fast broadband to stream hd content either live or on-demand, these NEVER struggle in the same way.  No lip sync issues, works every time .......  how is it that Peloton get this right but Sky can't ?

[TimmyBGood]

@Neilferret 

'Puck' rather than 'PUK' (actually 'Sky Stream Puck').

PUK is usually 'personal unblocking key '

[fizzdisco]

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@Neilferret wrote:

Understand, of course.  My only point is that even with blistering network availability, the Sky Glass and PUKS sill have issues.   Bearing in mind that I have the Peloton Bike, Peloton tread and Peloton Guide that all require fast broadband to stream hd content either live or on-demand, these NEVER struggle in the same way.  No lip sync issues, works every time .......  how is it that Peloton get this right but Sky can't ?

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As someone who works in TV post production, I find lip sync issues to be absolutely maddening too. Every TV and streaming device I own has no problem at all at maintaining it even at full 4K resolution with Dolby Vision & Atmos, and that's just on a 74Mbps download speed. 

The problems with Glass and the pucks, particularly as the lip-sync is drifting, rather than just being out, suggests to me that the hardware is just not up to it. The audio and video needs to maintain a regular clock speed to keep sync with one another. The processing is possibly taking a nano second too long on either the audio or video side and not re-checking clock sync before output. As time goes on, these nano seconds build up and become seconds. Flicking to another channel and back again will reset the sync clock so lip sync will be OK again... for a period of time. 

Whether this is happening to everyone or whether it's only on some batches of the hardware is impossible to say. Many people aren't sensitive to lip-sync and possibly don't notice it drifting at all. 

[stereohaven]

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@Neilferret wrote:

Understand, of course.  My only point is that even with blistering network availability, the Sky Glass and PUKS sill have issues.   Bearing in mind that I have the Peloton Bike, Peloton tread and Peloton Guide that all require fast broadband to stream hd content either live or on-demand, these NEVER struggle in the same way.  No lip sync issues, works every time .......  how is it that Peloton get this right but Sky can't ?

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Because Sky Glass is underpowered and uses cheap components.

The software is slowly seeing improvements but at the end of the day it is built to a price point that enables Sky to make more money on a mass produced product. They know that a significant proportion of their customers will not be aware of it's hardware limitations or care to the degree that some of us do about picture quality. 

Sky have decided to try and emulate selling the "experience" that Apple or Peloton or Sonos offer but have cut too many corners on the hardware on this version.

[Joe-Bow]

@fizzdisco  My glass Tv never originally had the issue, yet it seems to have been introduced over the last few updates for me.  My pucks have never experienced it, however I do set those away from the auto setting which seems to give me issues on them.  If I set the Pucks to some of the Dolby settings then it seems to introduce stuttering video, hence my long held feeling, as well as yours, that the Pucks in my case may well be under specced for the job.

[TimmyBGood]

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@fizzdisco wrote:

The problems with Glass and the pucks, particularly as the lip-sync is drifting, rather than just being out, suggests to me that the hardware is just not up to it.

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We know there's a quad ARM Cortex A55-based SoC at the core of the system which certainly isn't exactly cutting-edge these days:  it was in the Galaxy S9 back in 2018, for example.

[fizzdisco]

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@TimmyBGood wrote:

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@fizzdisco wrote:

The problems with Glass and the pucks, particularly as the lip-sync is drifting, rather than just being out, suggests to me that the hardware is just not up to it.

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We know there's a quad ARM Cortex A55-based SoC at the core of the system which certainly isn't exactly cutting-edge these days:  it was in the Galaxy S9 back in 2018, for example.

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I'd be intrigued to know what chip is in the Virgin Stream box - can't seem to find any info about it at all. It seems to have its issues too but lip-sync doesn't appear to be one of them judging by the customer forums.  

It's a clever idea limiting it to one box in a household with Virgin fibre broadband only. 

[TimmyBGood]

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@fizzdisco wrote:

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I'd be intrigued to know what chip is in the Virgin Stream box

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I like its little carpet-tile square. Maybe a hamster bed....

Interesting that they specify 50Mbs as minimum internet speed.

[fizzdisco]

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@TimmyBGood wrote:

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@fizzdisco wrote:

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I'd be intrigued to know what chip is in the Virgin Stream box

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I like its little carpet-tile square. Maybe a hamster bed....

Interesting that they specify 50Mbs as minimum internet speed.

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Perfect! I'd love to have been in that design meeting... 

[TimmyBGood]

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@fizzdisco wrote:

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I'd love to have been in that design meeting... 

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It is the weirdest thing: I'm not sure if you're supposed to vacuum or shampoo that top surface.

The remote isn't exactly stylish either.

[fizzdisco]

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@TimmyBGood wrote:

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@fizzdisco wrote:

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I'd love to have been in that design meeting... 

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It is the weirdest thing: I'm not sure if you're supposed to vacuum or shampoo that top surface.

The remote isn't exactly stylish either.

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I wonder if it was in response to the speaker covers on Glass? Quick - we need to put carpet on our stream box!

And yes, the remote looks very 1988... 

[stereohaven]

They didn't learn anything about the disadvantages of using a dust magnet as a speaker cover on the soundbox when they designed those Sky Glass covers did they?