Watching films on 2 boxes

[KermitSun]

I've just moved over to Sky from Virgin. I used to be able to just choose a film and watch it (including sky cinema), but Sky is downloading it first? This take ages.

We've just tried watching two films, on two separate boxes. My daughter put her film on upstairs, but now the downstairs box is saying "this programme can't be downloaded right now because something else is being downloaded and watched."

Surely we shouldn't need to plan hours in advance if we want to watch films? What are we doing wrong? Thanks.

[nigea99]

hi @KermitSun 

SKY is not a streaming service so unfortunately anything not watched or recorded from live channels is downloaded and as you have found SKy only  downloads a single programme at a time, qeueuing the others up behind

For a single programme, depending on your internet speed, it usually can keep up after an initial delay   

Thus I am afraid you do need to plan ahead if different  members of the family want to watch different things

[oldfella]

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@KermitSun wrote:

I've just moved over to Sky from Virgin. I used to be able to just choose a film and watch it (including sky cinema), but Sky is downloading it first? This take ages.

We've just tried watching two films, on two separate boxes. My daughter put her film on upstairs, but now the downstairs box is saying "this programme can't be downloaded right now because something else is being downloaded and watched."

Surely we shouldn't need to plan hours in advance if we want to watch films? What are we doing wrong? Thanks.

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Hi @KermitSun 

Downloads on Q will only be one at a time.  Multiple downloads will Queue and only proceed when the previous one has fully downloaded.  The queue can be changed if required by stopping the current download and starting another one.

Download time will solely depend on your broadband speed and content size.

[KermitSun]

That's really helpful. I thought it allowed you to record multiple programmes. Is that not the case then? Thanks.

[nigea99]

hi @KermitSun 

you can record  up to 6 different programmes  (or watch up to 3 - on the main + 2 minis) at the same time but these are from the 'live' Satellite channels rather than downloading from catch up / on demand

Once recorded or downloaded you can watch on any box independently (or simultaneously)

[TimmyBGood]

@KermitSun 

Perhaps also worth noting that Virgin can deliver much higher data speed over its private network of coaxial cable than any ISP can do over an Openreach phone line, so unless you are using Sky Ultrafast over FTTP you're probably now on a significantly reduced data rate than you were before.

[KermitSun]

Good point. We have gone from a very fast broadband to a vastly reduced one, that's averaging around 2.6-3.7mbs from the speed tests I'm doing (It's only just been installed so I'm assuming this will improve).

Virgin increased prices massively over the years, and when I mentioned leaving said they could only increase the bill further. Moving to sky has more than halved my bill but I wonder if a hybrid of Sky with Virgin for internet might be a better option.

[TimmyBGood]

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@KermitSun wrote:

We have gone from a very fast broadband to a vastly reduced one, that's averaging around 2.6-3.7mbs from the speed tests I'm doing 

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OK: that's really slow by itself, let alone compared to Virgin, and on-demand content is inevitably going to take ages to spool enough to disk for playback to start.

If you post your Hub stats, we'll have some information about your particular phone line and internet connection to work with.

Note that it's speed arriving at the Hub which counts against the minimum speed guarantee, not speed test website results on a wireless device.