Is Stream worth it?

[Tarrantino]

I'm out of contract this month. Hanging around to see what Black Friday deals are about. I have Sky Q right now. I do record stuff on Sky Max/Showcase alongside the F1 and sometimes football. Also terrestrial channels with their drams. 

Is Stream about to handle all this. I've seen discussions about the recordings are not recordings as such but cloud viewing. So I'd select the clouds recording of say the live F1 race from earlier in the day? 

How reliable is as Sky Q has been flawless. I know it's slowly being placed. Depends if I can eek out another couple of years on Q v the price. 

[Gincap]

If you're a sports fan then stream is not so reliable. There are many posts here on the limitations for sports viewers. As for other items then it is a streaming service not a recording one plus there are several niche channels missing from stream found on Q. 

There are alternatives Now is 'now' very good and a fraction of the cost. 

if you can visit a store and check it out, plenty on YouTube also. 

Stream/Glass is very marmite. 

[Mister_Dalek]

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@Tarrantino wrote:

I'm out of contract this month. Hanging around to see what Black Friday deals are about. I have Sky Q right now. I do record stuff on Sky Max/Showcase alongside the F1 and sometimes football. Also terrestrial channels with their drams. 

Is Stream about to handle all this. I've seen discussions about the recordings are not recordings as such but cloud viewing. So I'd select the clouds recording of say the live F1 race from earlier in the day? 

How reliable is as Sky Q has been flawless. I know it's slowly being placed. Depends if I can eek out another couple of years on Q v the price. 

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Sky Stream is a bit of a Marmite product. Some love it, some hate it. 

Watching live sport can be problematic after the event. You'll see lots of reports on here of customers saying they've not been able to view an entire match or race, only highlights on demand, so it's not 100% certain you'll get to watch what you want when you want to. 

The only real way to find out if it'll work for you is to try it. Remember that you'll need fast and stable broadband for it to function with any form of stability, and this is your responsibility, not Sky's.

You can cancel within 31 days and revert back to Q if you wish. They won't ask for your Q box back until after the 31 days has elapsed so it can be pretty straightforward to switch back. 

[mikealanr]

Hi @Tarrantino 

Only you can answer that based on your needs! It is a different system. Yes you can cloud record, but some broadcasts don't allow this and send you to the relevant catch up service (e.g. iPlayer and ITVX). It depends on your viewing habits.

The F1 can be problematic and delays have been noted for content not added as cloud recordings becoming available and several hours delay before playback. This has got better over time, but there was a major issue the other weekend.

For me having UHD on each TV and I suffered with lots of disconnections of my Q mini boxes, it is a better system, plus I tend to binge watch content and view very little live TV except sports, I prefer it.

Other things to note is content is delivered by internet and you need 30 Mbps minimum for a stable experience. Also note the channel line up is different than Q.

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/tv-channel-list-sky-glass

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-stream-faqs

Make sure you do your research!

MikeAlanR

[Tarrantino]

Yeah cheers for that. This is part of my research too tbh. I am happy with Q. I'm hoping to switch to UHD as just had a new TV too. If sports is dodgy asa earlier post suggest then this almost makes my mind up straight away. 

[TimmyBGood]

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@Tarrantino wrote:

If sports is dodgy asa earlier post suggest then this almost makes my mind up straight away. 

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Q has the huge advantage that as long as the local hardware (dish and box) is functioning properly then a broadcast is going to end up on the hard drive for playback as desired.  When things glitch in the workflow for Glass/Stream, on-demand playback becomes a problem for all users until that's resolved by Sky.

[Mister_Dalek · Accepted solution]

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@Tarrantino wrote:

Yeah cheers for that. This is part of my research too tbh. I am happy with Q. I'm hoping to switch to UHD as just had a new TV too. If sports is dodgy asa earlier post suggest then this almost makes my mind up straight away. 

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If Q has been flawless for you and it does what you need it to then definitely stick with it. I had a single Sky Q box with UHD & HDR which worked perfectly but decided to switch to Stream as we wanted rid of the dish. I gave the Stream puck a year before cancelling Sky completely as it made watching TV a frustrating experience rather than a pleasurable one. 

If you have a stable Sky Q system then there really is no need to switch to Stream. 

[Jporch316]

Just bear in mind that the end of satellite broadcasting is nigh (potentially 2029) and invariably more platforms are moving to streaming platforms over internet 

[Tarrantino]

Yeah I know. I'm not adverse to stream at all. However Q is pretty flawless for me and you'd hope to get the same. Yes you can't record on strea, but you expect to get access to things like the F1 race when you want hours later.