Charging for Ad skipping is a complete and utter disgrace

[Padam_Padam]

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Padam_Padam wrote:

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@GB28 wrote:

I agree Ofcom is behind the curve, but after the long chat with Sky technical support, they are saying it is operating as designed. I guess customers will vote by going elsewhere if this is indicative of what we get.

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That's what I did. The poor functionality of Sky Stream was enough for me to stop being a Sky customer after 18 years, It turned watchung TV into an infuriating experience, 

I'm so pleased to be rid of it TBH. The alternative TV streaming service we now use is so much more polished and reliable. 

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What service is that please?

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We stream everything via an Apple TV 4K box.

We're not sports fans in our house, we mainly watch movies and drama series and have no need for live TV. I pay £10pm for Netflix Premium as a perk of my EE mobile contract, get free Apple TV+ until November, Disney+ is currently free on a 6 month offer from my wife's mobile contract, we subscribe to Max and Peacock in the USA (but we're not allowed to discuss how on these forums) and get all UK broadcast live streams and catch up content from the relevant apps (iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4, My5, etc). 

The Apple TV box has an Up Next feature (similar to Sky's playlist) which keeps track of where you are in a series and you can add upcoming shows to it to stream when you wish. If you have an iPhone or Apple Watch you can get alerts telling you when a new episode is available to watch.

Voice control using the Siri remote is much more useful than Sky Stream's effort. For one it understands me 95% of the time, and has many more useful features.

It's not for everyone - there are plenty of Apple haters who will forever sing Sky's praises, but compared to the Stream puck the hardware is far superior. Yes it's more expensive, but it's faster, much better built and just works. I've had to do a restart (from a menu rather than the switch at the wall) just once in the past 3 months. With proper frame rate matching, a vast range of user-chosen apps and more HDR options it suits us as a household much better than Sky Stream ever did. 

Just to be clear - Sky Stream can and does work well for some people but it depends on many factors. It didn't work for us, largely due to quality and reliability. But the Apple TV 4K box suits how we watch TV perfectly.  

[Anonymous]

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@Padam_Padam wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@Padam_Padam wrote:

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@GB28 wrote:

I agree Ofcom is behind the curve, but after the long chat with Sky technical support, they are saying it is operating as designed. I guess customers will vote by going elsewhere if this is indicative of what we get.

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That's what I did. The poor functionality of Sky Stream was enough for me to stop being a Sky customer after 18 years, It turned watchung TV into an infuriating experience, 

I'm so pleased to be rid of it TBH. The alternative TV streaming service we now use is so much more polished and reliable. 

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What service is that please?

---

We stream everything via an Apple TV 4K box.

We're not sports fans in our house, we mainly watch movies and drama series and have no need for live TV. I pay £10pm for Netflix Premium as a perk of my EE mobile contract, get free Apple TV+ until November, Disney+ is currently free on a 6 month offer from my wife's mobile contract, we subscribe to Max and Peacock in the USA (but we're not allowed to discuss how on these forums) and get all UK broadcast live streams and catch up content from the relevant apps (iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4, My5, etc). 

The Apple TV box has an Up Next feature (similar to Sky's playlist) which keeps track of where you are in a series and you can add upcoming shows to it to stream when you wish. If you have an iPhone or Apple Watch you can get alerts telling you when a new episode is available to watch.

Voice control using the Siri remote is much more useful than Sky Stream's effort. For one it understands me 95% of the time, and has many more useful features.

It's not for everyone - there are plenty of Apple haters who will forever sing Sky's praises, but compared to the Stream puck the hardware is far superior. Yes it's more expensive, but it's faster, much better built and just works. I've had to do a restart (from a menu rather than the switch at the wall) just once in the past 3 months. With proper frame rate matching, a vast range of user-chosen apps and more HDR options it suits us as a household much better than Sky Stream ever did. 

Just to be clear - Sky Stream can and does work well for some people but it depends on many factors. It didn't work for us, largely due to quality and reliability. But the Apple TV 4K box suits how we watch TV perfectly.  

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Thanks for that. I'm an apple developer, so have a few Apple TVs around. 

I'm no fan of sky, and would be off like a shot if it wasn't for UHD F1 and Prem. 

I can't get that anywhere else, so I'm just trying to make the best of it. 

[Supercatthemarvel]

Ad skipping is a complete rip off.

It kind of works on channel 4 but is unreliable. Any other channel in my playlist (includind sky channels), it just freezes the program and you have to go back to home screen and back into the program to get it working and guess what? Yes, it takes you to the beginning of the ads again.

Total and utter rip off!!! Dont waste your money on it...

[Steve93]

I have Apple TV 4K & the NOW tv app & Sky Stream, yes it's faster than Stream & you get no adds for £6 a month, it's good my only gripe is Ch5 they don't offer a premium version & you have to watch all the adverts which is a real pain, wonder why MY5 don't offer this service, there's only "watch from start"  on bbc & ch5

also the add skipping on Sky Stream, I don't have a problem with works fine for me have got it free until mid August 

[Mister_Dalek]

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@Steve93 wrote:

I have Apple TV 4K & the NOW tv app & Sky Stream, yes it's faster than Stream & you get no adds for £6 a month, it's good my only gripe is Ch5 they don't offer a premium version & you have to watch all the adverts which is a real pain, wonder why MY5 don't offer this service, there's only "watch from start"  on bbc & ch5

also the add skipping on Sky Stream, I don't have a problem with works fine for me have got it free until mid August 

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Incorrect. Watch from the start is also available across all live channels on the ITVX and Channel 4 apps on Apple TV 4K and other streaming devices which offer the live channel streams. 

[Steve93]

Yes but you still can't fast forward through adverts on these channels unless you have their premium versions

[AaronGallagher]

I pay premium on virtually all streaming services and this is without a doubt the biggest con out there.

How is Advert "fast forward" skipping. Never mind the aesthetic viewing pleasure being 100% destroyed by having to reach for the remote and paying £5 (£60 a year) for the pleasure.

I mention the annual to give some context to it not being nothing.  This is almost the same as what some streaming services charged for their entire service (OK, Maybe a few years ago, but jeez)  absolutely outrageous that Sky have temerity to charge for this.

[Flimbin]

Infuriating today. I was at Saints match and  there was a strange incident at the kickoff. I wanted to watch it on Sky TV when I got home.  To get to the star of the game, I had to watch the ads 3 times - the same ads 3 times over. I reckon it took me 15 minutes to fast forward to the start of the match. I also wanted to see the Makinson red card incident on the tv. Another 3  watches of the ads and another 15 minutes of my life gone. So I'm annoyed with the ref, annoyed with Makinson, annoyed with the pundits, but none of these compare with how annoyed I am with Sky! It seems like they deliberately provide a poorer service than they could to blackmail users into paying for ad skipping.  Appalling that this is seen as  just a business practice.

[Mr+Michael+P]

Another strange anomaly if you take Sky's own drama brassic you could pay sky best part of £25 pounds for entertainment then £5 for ad skipping to watch this drama with forced ads throughout running the experience. Now they have sold the first 4 seasons to Netflix which you can also have with Sky for £11 to watch ad free in 4k which is a fully ad free way to watch the show. Bizzare they don't allow an option to have ad free on demand for sky branded channels and content. Some same it would cost sky too much but somehow this all all possible on Now TV with 4K, hdr and Atmos. They really are putting greed above the paying customers 

[TimmyBGood]

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@Mr+Michael+P wrote:

Some same it would cost sky too much but somehow this all all possible on Now TV with 4K, hdr and Atmos. They really are putting greed above the paying customers

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Alternatively, it's putting expensive product such as original drama on Sky broadcast (with adverts) for a wide audience which makes enough money to permit parallel distribution on Now, a very minority platform...

Once the television advertising market finally collapses, an awful lot of content like Brassic won't get made at all.  By itself, Now couldn't afford to commission a medium latte.

[GD1]

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@TimmyBGood wrote:

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@Mr+Michael+P wrote:

Some same it would cost sky too much but somehow this all all possible on Now TV with 4K, hdr and Atmos. 

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By itself, Now couldn't afford to commission a medium latte.

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😀 🍮

[LPalf]

Yeah. Its absolutely rubbish. Im in contract till next year but will be ditching. Dissapointed with sky stream. Trying to fast forward or rewind anything is just awful. Would bever have bought if had known it was like this. 

[GB28]

Yep, it is the must obnoxious TV experience I have ever had. I'm switching away from Sky and counting the days to end of contract. Yessterday, trying to watch Sunday League Football ,60 minutes from it starting. 10 minutes of forced adds just to get to the start of play. Then, every 30 seconds it skips forward 10 seconds. During play, I tried to FF a little, it says 10 minutes of playing adverts - the football was on. Got the the end of the match and pressed pause to go sort something else out for 10 minutes. Come back and it has un-paused itself. Once done, tried to catch up with the ODI cricket. It started with saying '15 minutes of adverts'. I abandoned that and went to iplayer highlights. I can't see Sky surviving as more and more switch to streaming - it's an utter omnishambles.