My Sky Stream subscription cancellation came into effect a few days ago. I bought the puck back in October 2022 (back when you could properly buy one for £20) so it's one of the 'customer owned' ones and I don't need to return it to Sky.
According to Sky:
Any Sky Stream pucks you have won't work without a subscription. You'll see a "No subscription" message
This is correct. When I first powered on my puck after the subscription had ended, that is what appeared on screen. But, after reading a post by @Derek_Trotter at the end of last year (post 9 on this thread), I tried what he did and factory reset the puck.
I then powered the puck back on, connected to WiFi, connected the remote and tried re-linking it to my SkyID. I logged into my SkyID online, input the linking code and boom - the usual Sky Stream home page appeared! The TV Guide, all the apps and games were there, and even my previous playlist items where there. The only thing which didn't work were the live channel streams - it just says on-screen that you need to upgrade your subscription to watch.
Just to be clear - I have no active Sky Stream subscription at all.
I tried some of the apps (well, the ones I could be bothered logging into again) and they all worked fine. Disney+, Prime Video, Apple TV+, iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4, etc. I didn't try Netflix in case it tried to link it to my Sky account and screwed up the payment method I now have via my EE SIM card (£10pm for Premium) but everything else worked as normal.
I tried clicking on a BBC show that was in my playlist and it opened iPlayer as normal to continue watching it. Same with a Channel 4 show. They appeared in the continue watching rail too (later in the day).
I also tried adding a BBC programme and a couple of Channel 4 programmes to my playlist and that also worked!
So what Sky say: Any Sky Stream pucks you have won't work without a subscription clearly isn't true.
Now, maybe this is a temporary thing. It's only been three days since my subscription ended, but I've checked every day since and the puck has turned on to the usual home page as normal, as if I had a subscription. Perhaps Sky will stop it at some point once they realise my SkyID isn't generating them any income, but for now, it does function.
Don't know if this is useful information to anyone or not, and perhaps Sky don't want customers to know that the pucks do work like a standard streaming device (to some extent) without a subscription.
The key thing I guess is the fact that the majority of pucks out in the wild now (post Feb 2023) are Sky-owned and just loaned to customers. The numbers of customer-owned pucks (Oct 2022 - Feb 2023) are probably a lot less, and people who do own them are probably still subscribing.
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Moderator note: Removed innapropriate remarks.
