Gigaclear and Sky Stream?

[zmazmazma]

Hi. I've been a Sky customer for years (broadband, phone, sport, movies, the lot) but my latest renewal price made my eyes water — so I'm now exploring other options.

The main one is Gigaclear because they are the only ones that offer fast broadband in my area (out in the sticks). They have offered a far better deal for broadband and said if I still want Sky Sports etc, my best bet is to do it via Sky Stream.

Does anyone have experience of Sky Stream via a non-Sky broadband provider like Gigaclear? Is it better than e.g. NOW TV?

Any help greatly appreatly appreciated. I really wanted to stick with Sky so I could have everything with one contract/bundle, but Sky's latest price hike has made it pretty much impossible to stay.

[Fothergill1]

Hi @zmazmazma and welcome to the forum.  Sky Glass and Stream work with any ISP not just Sky.  Where I live I cannot even get Sky Broadband and my local ISP works perfectly with my Stream Puck (and also Glass before I sold it and moved to the puck).

The important thing for the Sky Streaming platform is that the BB speed is sufficient AND stable.  Sky recommend the minimum speeds being received at your device/TV (not the router) should be:

HD = 25mbps

UHD = 30mbps

HD + 1 puck = 30mbps

UHD + 1 puck = 35mbps

You can test the speed being received at your device by loading Netflix and going to Get Help and then running "Check your network".    People are often surprised at how much speed they loose between the router and device.  I get 500mbps at my router but generally only around 350mbps at my puck / TV which is quite a significant drop (just checked it now and it is 303mbps which is less than normal).  

I am not able to give you any comparison with NOW TV as I have never used it but by all accounts it is much cheaper.

Personally I agree with you that it is getting too expensive;  To cut my costs I removed SPort earlier in the year and have just removed Cinema as TBH I tend to use Netflix for watching movies.

Good luck.

[Mister_Dalek]

@zmazmazma 

To give you the NOW comparison - it has certainly worked out a lot cheaper for me and I'm very grateful that Sky have finally offered it as an option with UHD, HDR and Atmos now available with it too. 

I currently pay £3.99pm for Entertainment with NOW (basically all the Sky channels: Showcase, Atlantic, Max, Witness, History, Arts, etc along with Gold, Alibi, MTV, Comedy Central & Sky News) along with £4pm for Ultra Boost to get UHD/HDR & Atmos content. I was paying £2pm for standard Boost (HD & 5.1 audio) but recently upgraded. This is on a 6 month contract and all on demand content is ad-free. 

It doesn't have all the other free-to-air channels on the EPG like you get with Sky Q or Sky Stream so that's one thing to bear in mind. 

My NOW account frequently offers me Sky Cinema at £4.99pm for 6 months and Sport at £20pm so there are always deals available if that's the kind of content you're after. 

NOW is different to Sky Stream in that it is entirely app based - you stream everything from the one app which can be on any streaming device or smart TV - you don't necessarily need any additional hardware. 

The beauty of the industry-wide switch to streaming is that there are all these options available. NOW is an excellent, cost effective means of getting Sky content in high quality without the long term subscription costs. 

[zmazmazma]

That's really helpful. Thank you very much. I think the speed will be good enough — much quicker than I get with Sky!

[zmazmazma]

That's really helpful. Thanks very much. I definitely want (NEED!) to get sport on top of the basic package, but it still looks like it would work out much cheaper than doing the whole thing through Sky. And much quicker broadband too. Seems a like no-brainer. Thank you very much