My good journey to Sky Stream from Sky Q

[lettice]

Today is three months since moving to Sky Stream from Sky Q.

In those three months, I have not had any issues with either of my two pucks.

Have kept one on ethernet and one on wifi, both performing without any network glitches.

So pleased that the Great set of channels have sorted out ther cloud recordings of those split films ( entertainment short programme between).

All now play out as a cloud recording. Great, to cloud record all those great westerns especially.

All my Sports cloud content, whether it be IPL, F1, Indycar, premier league/efl/fa cup football, tennis, golf and the like has all cloud recorded without issue.

Always enjoyed the 4k coverage that Eurosport provided of live matches and replays during previous years of the French Open.

This year, they are doing the same and the match replays they have shown so far have really shown off the uplift in pq that Sky Stream offers, not only with its HD broadcast quality,, but in this case the HDR quality.

Look forward this week to watching the French Open in HDR for selective matches.

The continue watching and playlist for all my easy to get to and view option is still working very well to my liking, as I have mentioned previously above.

Still finding the apps, whether Netflix, Discovery+, Apple TV+, Disney+, Paramount+, ItvX, 4 and 5 all work well and moving between apps and linear tv is an easy flow.

One thing I find could be much improved, is the layout of the Sports menus, it feels like a lot of panning up down, left/right to get to content easily or quickly while browsing. Hopefully, that will get some improvement as Sky Stream evolves.

[nmbailey]

I wonder how typical this experience is of the Stream technology? I moved from Virgin Media a year ago and it's all been good so far for me, too. I'm a little wary of my monthly bill increasing when my initial 18 months are up but compared to what I was being asked to pay by Virgin (after 25 years as a customer) I'm happy with Sky Stream

[Padam_Padam]

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@nmbailey wrote:

I wonder how typical this experience is of the Stream technology? I moved from Virgin Media a year ago and it's all been good so far for me, too. I'm a little wary of my monthly bill increasing when my initial 18 months are up but compared to what I was being asked to pay by Virgin (after 25 years as a customer) I'm happy with Sky Stream

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I think it's fair to say that most Sky Stream customers are probably relatively happy. People come on these forums to moan mainly, but their numbers are relatively small in the grand scheme of things. 

The Sky Stream 'experience' is hugely dependent on the customer's broadband network. Those with decent stable bandwidth have a better experience. Simple. 

A lot also depends on what a customer expects from the service. Many customers are switching to streaming for the first time and whilst some find the change difficult, others take to it well. 

A lot also depends on how you consume TV. For those serial channel hoppers who aren't fussed about frame rates or HDR, like to be fed lots of stuff to choose from in one fairly simple interface, and just like to have something on all the time, then it can be ideal. 

For others (mainly non-sports fans), who perhaps seek a more refined experience, who choose what they want to watch by other means and care a little more about how this content is presented to them, then it can be problematic. But these people are very much in the minority. 

Sky Stream is a mass market product, designed to appeal to as many as possible. It delivers what most of those people want very effectively, and those that don't like it can easily get what they want elsewhere. That's the joy of the streaming world.    

[IWTD]

We switched from Q to stream in early December and have had no issue, I think there are probably two main issues that give stream/glass a negative image the first is essentially using the playlist wrong, I can't speak first hand about the state of the service when they first launched but I watched so many YouTube reviews when both glass and then stream were first launched and it completely put me off even considering it, they all showed how every episode available is there etc, the Simpsons was one fo their favourites to show as there are 34 odd series, they were using the playlist exactly like you would use the planner on satellite, the playlist is your watchlist, using the Simpsons again you wouldn't go on Disney + go to your watchlist scroll all the way through 34 series to find series 11 episode 20 etc when it's sat at the front of your continue watching rail, stream works exactly the same way you should really only be going to the playlist to start a new programme, once started it lives on the continue watching rail, weekly programmes work the same for example this morning new episodes of  both The Jinx part two and The Cleaning Lady are right there front and centre as the most recent entires, this works the same way for all new weekly shows across all apps except annoyingly Disney+, it took us 3/4 weeks to break the habit of going to the playlist first and instead treating it like one fo the streaming apps, in just shy of seven months the only cloud recording issues we have had are one documentary on PBC America just simoly doing nothing, and the others were over Christmas were a few films were recorded from ITV/CH5 were they recorded the first part fine but both channels stick those stupid 5 minute entertainment rubbish in the middle causing the second half not to record. 

The second issue will be your own broadband connection, the speeds Sky advertise may be all fine if you live alone or a couple watching the same tv it may be fine, but if your a busy household anything less that a full fibre connection is just crazy and asking for trouble, we are a household of me the wife and three kids, four pucks and with Sky's gigabit have not had a single outage or issue, with some of the wether over the winter there would have been multiple blue screen of death and no satellite signal on Q in this time, yet stream has not so much as blinked.

The second aspect is your own internal network environment and this is YOUR responsibility not anyone else's in this age of playing victim and no self responsibility for yourself,  this is a true story of a relative of mine, if you had you ONT installed in your closet under your stairs and hence your router is now in there behind a closed door and things don't work because you didn't want to look at a 'ugly router' it's not the isp's fault when your getting over the full speed into you house, stream needs a constant consistent connection to work correctly. 

[MarkGoldsmith]

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@IWTD wrote:

We switched from Q to stream in early December and have had no issue, I think there are probably two main issues that give stream/glass a negative image the first is essentially using the playlist wrong, I can't speak first hand about the state of the service when they first launched but I watched so many YouTube reviews when both glass and then stream were first launched and it completely put me off even considering it, they all showed how every episode available is there etc, the Simpsons was one fo their favourites to show as there are 34 odd series, they were using the playlist exactly like you would use the planner on satellite, the playlist is your watchlist, using the Simpsons again you wouldn't go on Disney + go to your watchlist scroll all the way through 34 series to find series 11 episode 20 etc when it's sat at the front of your continue watching rail, stream works exactly the same way you should really only be going to the playlist to start a new programme, once started it lives on the continue watching rail, weekly programmes work the same for example this morning new episodes of  both The Jinx part two and The Cleaning Lady are right there front and centre as the most recent entires, this works the same way for all new weekly shows across all apps except annoyingly Disney+, it took us 3/4 weeks to break the habit of going to the playlist first and instead treating it like one fo the streaming apps, in just shy of seven months the only cloud recording issues we have had are one documentary on PBC America just simoly doing nothing, and the others were over Christmas were a few films were recorded from ITV/CH5 were they recorded the first part fine but both channels stick those stupid 5 minute entertainment rubbish in the middle causing the second half not to record. And even this has got better in the past 2 months with films broadcast on some channels now cloud recording in 2 parts.

The second issue will be your own broadband connection, the speeds Sky advertise may be all fine if you live alone or a couple watching the same tv it may be fine, but if your a busy household anything less that a full fibre connection is just crazy and asking for trouble, we are a household of me the wife and three kids, four pucks and with Sky's gigabit have not had a single outage or issue, with some of the wether over the winter there would have been multiple blue screen of death and no satellite signal on Q in this time, yet stream has not so much as blinked.

The second aspect is your own internal network environment and this is YOUR responsibility not anyone else's in this age of playing victim and no self responsibility for yourself,  this is a true story of a relative of mine, if you had you ONT installed in your closet under your stairs and hence your router is now in there behind a closed door and things don't work because you didn't want to look at a 'ugly router' it's not the isp's fault when your getting over the full speed into you house, stream needs a constant consistent connection to work correctly. 

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[lettice]

Now into my fifth month of Sky Stream

Still all good, no issues with either of my pucks.

Stream slightly changes your mindset for watching, as Ive mentioned above, but its all worked well and could say for the better.

Did really enjoy that all the Le Mans many, many hours coverage through that weekend on Eurosport all playlisted perfectly. Dropped in many times over the weekend with the few long hours of continual 'recordings' and used 'watched from start' to rewind and catchup at times.
The 'recordings' were 14 hours or so long.They are still sitting in my playlist, not that I would now really want to play them, Im a live or close to live watcher of Sports.

Even on Q I never held onto recordings for long, delete being your friend on Q for space, health and reliability.

On a Sunday I watch a lot of Sport, F1, Indycar, golf, football, tennis and more live and switching regularly between channels, with extra watching on Sky Go on a couple of tablets, side by side.

I always playlist the ITV all day coverage of the BTTC and drop in and out of it during the day, Using also again 'watch from start' and can just rewind or drop in to where I left off through the day with no issues.
On stream this also has worked a treat.

The euros has been reliable too with the BBC and ITV coverage, doing much the same as above with playlist  and 'watch from start' and some from Stream going through easily to the apps without issue.

What I do like about Stream, is how easy it is while in an app to drop back to a linear channel or a browse for content, switch to another app with a voice or remote control click and from home page 'left swipe' return quickly to where you left off.
For me that has all been a smooth, seamless and easy transition, a big bonus of how the Stream concept all fits and works across the watching platforms.

[Fothergill1]

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And even this has got better in the past 2 months with films broadcast on some channels now cloud recording in 2 parts.

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That's good to know @MarkGoldsmith 👍.  Whenever I see a movie with a break in the middle I don't bother with it so hadn't realised this has been fixed in some instances.

[nmbailey]

What channels are the split movies fixed on? Movies on Great and ITV channels were the culprits last time i looked

[lettice]

The Great set of channels ( Great movies/action/romance/TV) and the five set of channels (5 star, 5 action, 5 USA, 5 select and channel 5 itself) were all fixed just over a a couple of months back.

ITV has always worked fine for me, so must have been fixed before the end of Feb when I got Stream

The Film 4, Legend channels and Movies  24 channels have all playlisted fine.

[2Bob55]

Wish I could ,had Q moved to leaf living with supplied broadband but struggling to Change tv to stream 

[lettice]

I will from next month, be coming up to  a full year anniversary of Sky Stream

For me, it has been pretty fault free.

Only major, was the outage that affected all customers for a day or so last year.
But a quick response from Sky, with clear instructions got us back up and running and we as Superusers were then able to handhold many customers over the following days to get back up and running also.

A busy time it was and kind of frustrating to us all at the time, but it sure showed the value of the community to help customers.

Plus, Sky as they do for many of their platforms, make minor back end changes or updates that knock things out, but all have been rectified quickly. Not really seeing Sky Stream as any different in that respect that I saw or still see on Sky Q.

I have Sky fibre 500Mbps broadband that provides a good local reliable network (both my pucks run on wifi), which is key to a good reliable Sky Glass/Stream experience.

From My and fellow Superusers experience, for help offering on the community, it does often show how that for the majority of issues, it revolves around local network stability along with avoiding interference.

Despite some customers having lip sync issues, as reported on here, it's not something I have ever suffered from on my two pucks, with different TVs and soundbar setups.

I do get in the habit of once a week doing a restart from within the puck settings (used to repower the Sky Q boxes once a week also), I'm sure it helps clear out the cache and re focuses the boxes towards the focussed server point target.

Do not see any freezing or loading errors as some do.

As a big Sports fan, I've certainly had no issue through my year of Sky Stream, watching all my Sports.

Mostly on Sky Sports, but also from Eurosport, ITV, Discovery + app and of course the last few months or so via the recent Sky Sports app. That app, despite its first few days of launch glitches across the platforms, has behaved very well.

That, mostly being F1, Cricket, Premier League and EFL football, Golf, Tennis and other Motorsport, like Indy Car, Le Mans and Endurance series.

Not had any issues watching or adding to the playlist for any Sport and found it all painless to search through the rails for finding live, replays, or highlights.
F1 has behaved beautifully during the year, with only sometimes, the odd anomaly that Sky do of putting some things, like latest Teds latest Notebook under an Other tab. But then that used to happen on Sky Q and from what I have seen on here, still does.

Find the watch from start and live linear TV viewing is generally great.
If you play nice with it of course, it has its anomalies, like dropping to the next programme sometimes, something that is apparently on the fix list. So learn to add to playlist or plan and play in the meantime...

Find playing the playlisted content on the terrestrial channels works well and just so used to doing that now, it seems seemless.

Would like it if all the apps had a similar trick play. But using them quite often, you do get used to them all and their slight differences or oddities.

Yes, the odd trick play annoyance, like sometimes when finishing an ITV programme, you end up stuck on the home menu, but need to use the Sky remote Select button right key just once, rather than the dismiss button. Have reported, but still no fix yet...

Ad skipping works very well with the apps (excluding their variant methods, as above) and the recent skip ads button on the Sky On Demand is a great recent bonus. Very welcome update.

The continue watching rail, needs to be populated more for some apps, like lack of Disney+.

Liking the recent timeline update in the continue watching tiles, but needs Netflix tiles to show the same.

Not that I care, but see many want a delete button too on the continue watching rail. Mine updates well, use it regularly to return or select content that be honest rarely think to notice any need for regular deletion .

It can be daft, when you have finished a programme in an app and inadvertently it has played out a small portion of the next programme and adds it to continue rail, perhaps then a deletion option may help, but no real concern for me.

My playlist has over the year behaved well.
For example, I playlist Classic Eastenders every week day from U&Drama and in the whole time I have had Sky Stream, it has presented the two latest episode tiles from the day broadcast for viewing early evening without fail.

All my other playlisted content works as I expect, including cloud recordings, apps and presenting the latest episodes.

Its a small learning leap in the first month or so, from a legacy recording to hard drive (Sky Q),  but now I would prefer to stay with the playlist methodology than a legacy recording planner.

Do make good use of the update for Actor, cast & crew playlist addition. Found loads of new content from some of my liked from that.

I do switch on  a busy Sports day, between linear TV, playlisted content, app, Sky Sports+ app and apps using voice, even from within the apps, so no spending time exciting apps using their differing exit modes., or using the remote to scroll right/left up/down and the like to move between differing broadcast/content types.
Find that works fine without issue.

Voice is something that Sky Stream for me, as well as the above, along with searching and trick play is a big upgrade from Sky Q. Could be improved though with a lot more for some of the hidden menu/section areas, like calling out 'Premier league table'.

One more update, we have had through the year that has worked well, not seeing any issues, is the Live sync option for helping with the lag on Sky Sports content.

Its worked, but be honest, not something I really use with my Sky Sports viewing.

Of course, the month of December is a mad mad viewing month, sat at home with TV on many hours of the day.

Viewing across many channels, apps for all kinds of content, films, series, sports, plus checking Santas progress in the app.

Did not have one single glitch in that month with my Pucks.

Summary for the year.

Glad I made the move to Sky Stream, works very well without any day to day issues, provides all the content across the rails, with great voice.
All making for a search, find and recommend content across the now many varied sources, with Playlist bringing it all together.

Makes a busy viewing household happy and a happy Sky customer.