Sky Q awful to use

[Laing1]

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@Phil129 wrote:

Totally agree. The reason we stuck with sky is because of the old style tv guide which was intuitive and easy to navigate compared to my dads Virgin package.  I also agree about the remote it's awful to use. 
just watching a recording of only connect and when we pause the pause bar blanks out the part of the screen we wanted to see. It's beyond irritating that we are now locked into this deal. I guarantee we will will cancel on renewal. 

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@Phil129 if you press the dismiss button (the button to the left of the home button) it will remove the banner that comes up when you pause 

[Chodley]

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@Naegan wrote:

It is a really awful system compared with the old sky. The remote control I simply want to throw at whichever idiot designed it and thought the home button, smack bang in the middle of the remote was a good idea and to put the play and pause button at the top out of the way. I have had the control now for over a year and still regret ever swapping. It is just so user unfriendly.

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Completely agree on the positioning of the pause button. Bizarre design choice.

[Stiggsy]

Absolutely agree. Sky Q gives the impression of being thrown together in a hurry and has a number of irritating 'features' compared to Sky Plus .  The remote control is poorly designed with buttons that are rarely used central and often used buttons higher up away from your grasp. The remote has a slippery finish making it easy to drop and needed a rubber cover to grip successfully. I am forced use the mute button constantly as a program is always offered when I have not chosen yet. Selecting a recorded program will often drop you in part way through and not at the start. Channel selection on a line by line rolling screen basis is awful and I am constantly having to roll back to the top to see all the primary channels. 

I will try to be balanced and admit I love the verbal search feature compared to Sky Plus but the bad far outweighs the good.

[nigea99]

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@Stiggsy wrote:

Absolutely agree. Sky Q gives the impression of being thrown together in a hurry and has a number of irritating 'features' compared to Sky Plus .  The remote control is poorly designed with buttons that are rarely used central and often used buttons higher up away from your grasp. The remote has a slippery finish making it easy to drop and needed a rubber cover to grip successfully. I am forced use the mute button constantly as a program is always offered when I have not chosen yet. Selecting a recorded program will often drop you in part way through and not at the start. Channel selection on a line by line rolling screen basis is awful and I am constantly having to roll back to the top to see all the primary channels. 

I will try to be balanced and admit I love the verbal search feature compared to Sky Plus but the bad far outweighs the good.

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hi @Stiggsy 

Setting up your most used channels as Favourites is highly recommended - making it easier to scroll through and select them (the first 9 needing only a single keypress to go directly to them)

Shoould you start playing a recording part wy through then a quick way to go to the start is Voice control - "Go to Start"

Other handy recording voice controls are :
Skip nn minutes
Go To nn minutes
Back nn minutes


You can use hours, minutes & seconds or mix e.g. Go to 1hour 15 minutes

Skip nn minutes is very handy for adverts and you get used to the length on regular used channels (Many are around the 4 minute mark)

As mentioned you can also say Go To Start

Voice control in general is very useful - see
https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-q-voice-control-commands

[Stiggsy]

Hi nigea99 thanks for trying to help me be more forgiving of this disaster of a platform but I did say the voice control (or verbal search in my words) was the only positive feature I could find to date. Everything else is a mess in my view and for a Sky executive to describe Sky Q this week as ' much loved' was beyond belief. I will investigate the Favourites feature as you kindly suggested but I do not expect my opinion to be altered any time soon. I appreciate others hold a contrary view (a close friend included) but every day I find I cannot adjust to it's inherent faults and deficiencies.

[nigea99]

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@Stiggsy wrote:

Hi nigea99 thanks for trying to help me be more forgiving of this disaster of a platform but I did say the voice control (or verbal search in my words) was the only positive feature I could find to date. Everything else is a mess in my view and for a Sky executive to describe Sky Q this week as ' much loved' was beyond belief. I will investigate the Favourites feature as you kindly suggested but I do not expect my opinion to be altered any time soon. I appreciate others hold a contrary view (a close friend included) but every day I find I cannot adjust to it's inherent faults and deficiencies.

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@Stiggsy 

We do know that some customers really do not like the UI & remote for SKY Q - I would say it you get used to it but I know that is not the same as liking it etc.

I know after 7+ years of SKY Q I still am not overly fond of the thumbnails vs list driven menus - you can get far more info in a list than using thumbnails but many customers - especialy those more used to Tablets & phones prefer the thumbnail approach

If there is anything you would like us to advise if there is a better way of doing or just maybe some features you may have not come accross do check out the help section on the SKY box which now has  quite a few videos and indeed ask here - we will help where possible or just back up your fears/concerns - although, of course, others here may be more pro Q & don't always see it from another perspetive

BTW the Favourites also really helps if you use the info banner whilst watching to scroll up / down to see what is on  other channels - as the channels you like are togethe

[TimmyBGood]

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@Stiggsy wrote:

for a Sky executive to describe Sky Q this week as ' much loved' was beyond belief

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 Q has been on release since early 2016 and is now in use by the vast majority of Sky subscription households with relatively few complaints here.  It's also (allegedly) why Comcast spent so much money in 2018 to outbidding Disney and purchase Sky Group.

Certainly it has flaws: realistically as a mature product which has now been followed by a successor those aren't going to be addressed in the remaining few years it has left before satellite television ends.

[HD+User]

We've had Sky Q for around 18 months and hate the interface. and agree with others that it looks like a cheap hash-up development job. Been living with it assuming Sky would resolve the glaring issues it has, but nothing seems to have changed. If it's not dropping recording links on upcoming episodes, it's deciding to randomly record shows from a previous series, meaning you have to continually be on the look-out for things missed (or will miss) and remove the unwanted things it's decided to pick up. I assume this is some sort of programming tagging issue when programs are listed. The overall interface is not that bad, but does have a fair few qwerks which are annoying. For what we use it for, it's nowhere near as accurate nor usable as the older Sky+ solution. The channel coverage is excellent, just the usability being the main gripe. Our two year contract ends in around 4-5 months so will review what other options are available and if their functionality is any better.

[TimmyBGood]

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@HD+User wrote:

 Been living with it assuming Sky would resolve the glaring issues it has, but nothing seems to have changed. 

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Glass was already six years old when you started the contract: at that point an established product is very unlikely to undergo fundamental change (and Comcast had moved on to Glass/Stream)

The specific examples you give suggest metadata errors in the information provided by the channel concerned rather than a system issue.

[Richardsky1]

I still can't get over the fact that when you say 'art' into the voice search, you get no results. 👌

[Chodley]

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@TimmyBGood wrote:

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@HD+User wrote:

 Been living with it assuming Sky would resolve the glaring issues it has, but nothing seems to have changed. 

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Glass was already six years old when you started the contract: at that point an established product is very unlikely to undergo fundamental change (and Comcast had moved on to Glass/Stream)

The specific examples you give suggest metadata errors in the information provided by the channel concerned rather than a system issue.

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Do you mean Q was 6 years old?

[HD+User]

I'm not really expecting there will be any movement on their products bugs, that is until other providers present more useable options and people start to leave. I added my comments here in support of what others are also finding in relation to SkyQ.

As I'd said, the recording / not recording problems are most likely tagging / metadata issues, or the SkyQ software not picking up or correctly using the data, or indeed a combination of both. Either way the overall service solution is with Sky and is part of the package we've contracted. It is also important to understand that these particular recording type glitches were not happening under the older Sky+ solution and has only manifested since moving to the SkyQ offering, so if I'd have to guess then I know where I'd say the problem resides.

But it's not just those issues, overall the actual menu system and remote control interface is far less consistent or useable then the older solution and it makes tasks more complicated, which I'd say is a bakward step.

[Laing1]

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@HD+User wrote:

I'm not really expecting there will be any movement on their products bugs, that is until other providers present more useable options and people start to leave. I added my comments here in support of what others are also finding in relation to SkyQ.

As I'd said, the recording / not recording problems are most likely tagging / metadata issues, or the SkyQ software not picking up or correctly using the data, or indeed a combination of both. Either way the overall service solution is with Sky and is part of the package we've contracted. It is also important to understand that these particular recording type glitches were not happening under the older Sky+ solution and has only manifested since moving to the SkyQ offering, so if I'd have to guess then I know where I'd say the problem resides.

But it's not just those issues, overall the actual menu system and remote control interface is far less consistent or useable then the older solution and it makes tasks more complicated, which I'd say is a bakward step.

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@HD+User with your recording problems etc it may be worthwhile passing on the details of the programmes that are not linking to viewer relations at viewerR@sky.uk

The individual broadcasters are responsible for updating/uploading the metadata that is used to link programmes etc on the Sky Q EPG. If its not being done correctly sky need to be aware of that 

[TheFuryZone]

Heartily agree. Harder & slower to navigate around, and I hate being forced into the home screen everytime I start it. I just want to go back to the last channel I was on without having to press extra buttons. Plus HDCP startup errors intermittantly. A backwards step in the user experience and I'm considering dumping it now. Previous SKY+ was much easier to use.

[TimmyBGood]

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@HD+User wrote:

overall the actual menu system and remote control interface is far less consistent or useable then the older solution and it makes tasks more complicated, which I'd say is a bakward step.

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It certainly reflects a change in emphasis: Sky+ (from 2002) was an inherently 'live-first' platform (with many hardware versions not having network connections at all*) while Q started the move towards 'on-demand first', now carried through even more with Glass/Stream.  Sky maintains that's what their telemetry tells them is happening on average in the real world, but of course any individual household can be different.

*dial-up for basic interactive tasks such as voting never carried on-demand content as it's orders of magnitude too slow for that.