How much does a Sky puck cost?

[IR1]

How much does a Sky puck cost?

[Jones_The_Cat]

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@IR1 wrote:

How much does a Sky puck cost?

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You can't buy them from Sky - they are loaned to you as part of a Streaming subscription. There is usually a £39.95 'activation fee' with each puck.

[Jporch316]

@IR1 

As previous poster plus the monthly subscription cost for the sky channels 

[MarkGoldsmith]

Unlike a Glass TV the stream puck is absolutely useless without an active sky subscription which is part of the reason the puck is "loaned" to you rather than you purchasing it.

[Jones_The_Cat]

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@MarkGoldsmith wrote:

Unlike a Glass TV the stream puck is absolutely useless without an active sky subscription which is part of the reason the puck is "loaned" to you rather than you purchasing it.

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This isn't strictly true. 

A friend of mine cancelled their Stream subscription a couple of months ago. They had their puck for a year and bought it in October 2022 so it was one of the pre-Feb 2023 pucks which is customer owned.

Once their subscription ended the puck showed on-screen 'No Subscription' as shown on Sky's web page here:

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-glass-without-a-subscription 

But, he then factory reset the puck from the settings menu and it restarted, offering the usual options to connect the remote, connect to WiFi etc. and to activate the puck. Even though he had no active subscription and was paying nothing to Sky, it allowed him to link the puck to his SkyID and then opened to the usual home page with the EPG and all the apps available. 

None of the live channel streams work but all of the third-party apps work fine, so you can watch anything on iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4, My5, AppleTV+, Disney+, Prime, etc as long as you have active seperate subscriptions for them. 

Interestingly, the playlist still works too. You can add shows from the EPG to your playlist and, as long as they are available on one of those third party apps, will play and continue to track your progress through them on the Continue Watching rail.  

He was going to sell his puck on eBay but has instead kept it and his daughter now uses it on the TV in her bedroom. He gave me a full demo a couple of weeks ago and it does function exactly like it usually does, just without the live channel streams. If you try and select one the screen goes black as if it was about to load the stream but then says you need to upgrade your subscription. 

I guess anyone with a SkyID could therefore buy a second hand puck from eBay, activate it to their old SkyID and use it like this if they wanted. 

[MarkGoldsmith]

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@Jones_The_Cat wrote:

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@MarkGoldsmith wrote:

Unlike a Glass TV the stream puck is absolutely useless without an active sky subscription which is part of the reason the puck is "loaned" to you rather than you purchasing it.

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This isn't strictly true. 

A friend of mine cancelled their Stream subscription a couple of months ago. They had their puck for a year and bought it in October 2022 so it was one of the pre-Feb 2023 pucks which is customer owned.

Once their subscription ended the puck showed on-screen 'No Subscription' as shown on Sky's web page here:

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-glass-without-a-subscription 

But, he then factory reset the puck from the settings menu and it restarted, offering the usual options to connect the remote, connect to WiFi etc. and to activate the puck. Even though he had no active subscription and was paying nothing to Sky, it allowed him to link the puck to his SkyID and then opened to the usual home page with the EPG and all the apps available. 

None of the live channel streams work but all of the third-party apps work fine, so you can watch anything on iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4, My5, AppleTV+, Disney+, Prime, etc as long as you have active seperate subscriptions for them. 

Interestingly, the playlist still works too. You can add shows from the EPG to your playlist and, as long as they are available on one of those third party apps, will play and continue to track your progress through them on the Continue Watching rail.  

He was going to sell his puck on eBay but has instead kept it and his daughter now uses it on the TV in her bedroom. He gave me a full demo a couple of weeks ago and it does function exactly like it usually does, just without the live channel streams. If you try and select one the screen goes black as if it was about to load the stream but then says you need to upgrade your subscription. 

I guess anyone with a SkyID could therefore buy a second hand puck from eBay, activate it to their old SkyID and use it like this if they wanted. 

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Interesting - Don't Sky essentially deactivate old Sky accounts after a year with no subscription (hence why returning customers have to create new Sky ids) so would be interesting to see what happens after 12 months and if any of the functionality stops working.

[Jones_The_Cat]

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@MarkGoldsmith wrote:

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@Jones_The_Cat wrote:

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@MarkGoldsmith wrote:

Unlike a Glass TV the stream puck is absolutely useless without an active sky subscription which is part of the reason the puck is "loaned" to you rather than you purchasing it.

---

This isn't strictly true. 

A friend of mine cancelled their Stream subscription a couple of months ago. They had their puck for a year and bought it in October 2022 so it was one of the pre-Feb 2023 pucks which is customer owned.

Once their subscription ended the puck showed on-screen 'No Subscription' as shown on Sky's web page here:

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-glass-without-a-subscription 

But, he then factory reset the puck from the settings menu and it restarted, offering the usual options to connect the remote, connect to WiFi etc. and to activate the puck. Even though he had no active subscription and was paying nothing to Sky, it allowed him to link the puck to his SkyID and then opened to the usual home page with the EPG and all the apps available. 

None of the live channel streams work but all of the third-party apps work fine, so you can watch anything on iPlayer, ITVX, Channel 4, My5, AppleTV+, Disney+, Prime, etc as long as you have active seperate subscriptions for them. 

Interestingly, the playlist still works too. You can add shows from the EPG to your playlist and, as long as they are available on one of those third party apps, will play and continue to track your progress through them on the Continue Watching rail.  

He was going to sell his puck on eBay but has instead kept it and his daughter now uses it on the TV in her bedroom. He gave me a full demo a couple of weeks ago and it does function exactly like it usually does, just without the live channel streams. If you try and select one the screen goes black as if it was about to load the stream but then says you need to upgrade your subscription. 

I guess anyone with a SkyID could therefore buy a second hand puck from eBay, activate it to their old SkyID and use it like this if they wanted. 

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Interesting - Don't Sky essentially deactivate old Sky accounts after a year with no subscription (hence why returning customers have to create new Sky ids) so would be interesting to see what happens after 12 months and if any of the functionality stops working.

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Yeah, I was quite surprised that it still worked as much as it did. His daughter's been using it for a couple of months now and it works fine. It still had old playlisted shows from Sky channels on the Playlist so it obviously still had a link to the old subscription, but you couldn't play any of them. Only stuff from the third party apps will play from the playlist. 

I think what would be most interesting to find out would be if someone who's never had a Sky TV subscription before could create a Sky ID, buy a second hand puck, activate it and use the puck without paying Sky a penny? It would seem odd if you could, because you would be getting quite a lot of functionality for just the cost of a puck... playlist/EPG/apps etc. 

Hmmm. Speculating too much now. Better stop or I'll get banned. 😁 

[MarkGoldsmith]

Perhaps that's why Sky switched to puck loaning as they couldn't think of a way of stopping this from happening without breaking it for people who had purchased a Glass TV.

[Jones_The_Cat]

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@MarkGoldsmith wrote:

Perhaps that's why Sky switched to puck loaning as they couldn't think of a way of stopping this from happening without breaking it for people who had purchased a Glass TV.

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Yeah, that would make sense. The playlist and its integration with all the apps is a big USP of Sky Stream so it shouldn't really be free for anyone who just goes out and buys a second hand puck for £20 on eBay! 

[Exiled-in-HH]

Isn't this an usual outcome .... previously it's been reported that Sky Puck's become door stops without an active subscription🤔

Only Sky Pucks that were part of a Sky Glass subscription may have been reported as continuing to function, while pucks obtained without a Sky Glass subscription stopped functioning?

[Jones_The_Cat]

@Exiled-in-HH 

I just did a search on the forum and someone else seems to have had the same result from resetting a puck after cancelling their contract. Post #9 on this thread:

https://helpforum.sky.com/t5/Glass-Stream-Live/Reset-Stream-puck-without-subscription/m-p/4506283#M1...  

[Helspar73]

Do Any of your other free go up?

Or just the puck?

[Padam_Padam]

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@Helspar73 wrote:

Do Any of your other free go up?

Or just the puck?

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Not entirely sure what you mean by this. Do you have Sky Stream already and wish to add another puck or do you have some other Sky TV service and wish to switch to Stream? All costs vary. There is no one price which everyone pays. 

[BikerJP]

I'm about to switch from Sky Q to Stream but can't justify the monthly cost of a 2nd Puc for the bedroom which would probably only get a couple of hours use in a year. 

If I were to buy a Puc on eBay, can I enter my Sky ID into it and use it without having to pay the additional subscription?

Thanks!

[GD1]

@BikerJP  Some pucks may or may not be customer owned, in addition you would still need the Whole Home subscription to use 2 or more pucks