Recording on Sky glass or stream

[TimmyBGood]

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@Cold+Sweat wrote:

But imagine millions of Sky customers all pulling from the same source or area. Its going to cause major buffering or power intensive broadband stations, all of which will be unreliable and power intensive and bad for the planet / environment. 

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Additional data traffic actually has negligible additional electricity consumption: data centres absolutely add up, but media streamed onto a Sky platform isn't customer-created data and has relatively small additional storage needs.  Even every current Sky household streaming will only be a small percentage increase on existing internet throughput.

[Cold+Sweat]

But to stream a service like Netflix or Sky etc its been well documented the household would need reliable broadband speeds of at least 30mbps, or they will suffer buffering or glitching.

The problem is we are speculating because potentially we still have millions to switch from using a dish to receive Sky to using the broadband, so we dont really know what impact that will have on viewers. 

For example we still don't have fibre broadband, or speeds can't exceed 20mbps because we only have a copper wire source, and are concidered too far from the nearest exchange box.  There must be hundreds of thousands of households like that. 

• We can all pluck figures out of fresh air, but the truth is non of us know how pushing streaming onto everyone is going to impact on everyone. 

[TimmyBGood]

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@Cold+Sweat wrote:

We can all pluck figures out of fresh air, but the truth is non of us know how pushing streaming onto everyone is going to impact on everyone. 

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Presumably a bunch of extremely highly paid people at the top of a skyscraper in Philadelphia think they do know, and have a global-scale corporation to back them up.

Satellite television broadcasting is technology from the 1980s which, like many other things from that era, has had its day.

[TimmyBGood]

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@Cold+Sweat wrote:

For example we still don't have fibre broadband, or speeds can't exceed 20mbps because we only have a copper wire source, and are concidered too far from the nearest exchange box.  There must be hundreds of thousands of households like that. 

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Millions, hence the national rollout of FTTP.

[mikealanr]

Hi @Cold+Sweat 

The customers won't pull data from the same source. Presumably sky use CDN (Content Delivery Networks) of some of the big cloud providers in the same way as Netflix and all other streaming providers move content closer to their consumers to prevent single points of failure...

Most data centers don't consume additional power depending on load (there difference is miniscule) and have many advanced features to be carbon neutral. 

I work in 'fintech' looking after a platform with billions of transactions monthly and we have closed our owned and hosted data centers in favour of cloud because of the efficiency and stability they provide.

MikeAlanR

[Cold+Sweat]

Thats a fair point that customers dont pull from the same source, but the source needs to be robust enough to supply 4k high definition, or bluray quality television eventually. We are literally light years, away from being able to stream the same quality that a 4k bluray disc can offer. 

A lot of people are just blinded by convenience over quality. 

[Cold+Sweat]

Actually the fact is the majority of television is still in SD quality, which means standard definition. 

Only a hand full of channels are in HD quality on my TV.  I'm still not convinced that Sky's future is secure going down the streaming future, as its a step back in quality in my opinion. 

[TimmyBGood]

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@Cold+Sweat wrote:

I'm still not convinced that Sky's future is secure going down the streaming future, as its a step back in quality in my opinion. 

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As noted in other threads, it's considerably cheaper for channels to shift HD bitrates over the internet than a pay-per-megabyte satellite link: in a time of shrinking revenue that's an important incentive.

[GD1]

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@Cold+Sweat wrote:

Actually the fact is the majority of television is still in SD quality, which means standard definition. 

Only a hand full of channels are in HD quality on my TV.  I'm still not convinced that Sky's future is secure going down the streaming future, as its a step back in quality in my opinion. 

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And yet on stream it is considereable far more than a handful, in fact it's the reverse only a handful are SD.

[BenJoBanjo]

Sky's streaming platform is different to every other streaming service in that it hosts a large part of the OS and all the apps on a server, therefore allowing the receiving hardware (Stream puck or Glass TV) to be cheaper to produce.

What this also means is that it needs a faster, more stable broadband connection than most other streaming services. Devices such as Firesticks, Google TV, Apple TV 4K, Roku Streaming Sticks, and most smart TVs all have on board storage where apps are downloaded and a cache for buffering. This takes some of the pressure off the bandwidth required for streaming content from apps on those devices. This is why people like my mother can still stream iPlayer satisfactorally on her TV, even though she rarely gets above 10Mbps. 

As free to air TV starts to switch to a streamed format too, in the form of Freely, there's also the issue of getting these channels to people without an aerial, and potentially without good broadband. In such cases we may end up seeing TVs and set-top boxes being fitted with internal 4G/5G chips, much like smart meters, in order to receive basic free-to-air TV withou aerial or broadband. 

Sky is a choice. A paid for choice. If you want it you either need to live somewhere that can have a dish (until the satellites die or Comcast kill Q), or somewhere that can receive fast and stable broadband, or use a streaming device with the NOW app and just watch Sky content that way, without Sky's OS. 

If there aren't already ways to watch streamed TV at the place you live then there will be before the decade is out. It may not be in the best quality, but if it's not the quality you want it to be then you'll need to move.

HD and UHD streaming is not a right, it's a choice.  

[TimmyBGood]

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@BenJoBanjo wrote:

In such cases we may end up seeing TVs and set-top boxes being fitted with internal 4G/5G chips, much like smart meters, in order to receive basic free-to-air TV withou aerial or broadband. 

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I think the issue there would be the ongoing cost of data provision: unless it comes out of the Licence Fee (which the BBC would be hugely resistant to) then there's no-one to fund it.

[BeeM001]

But you can't record to watch whenever you like. Once it stops being available then it's gone for good.

[Hunter2660]

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@BeeM001 wrote:

But you can't record to watch whenever you like. Once it stops being available then it's gone for good.

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And when the hard drive dies in your PVR......... then your recordings are gone for good. Nothing's 100% perfect after all.

[BeeM001]

We tend to get new Sky equipment every few years, so the hard drive wearing out has never been a problem in over 20 years of using Sky Q or it's predecessors.

[Kentish+Rake]

I wish I did not switch to Glass 2. The old Sky Q system was far superior in every way. When Sky sold it me on the phone, it was described as a cheaper option, going forward. Sky never once mentioned that there was zero recording capacity. Now I am stuck with it for two years. Worse, when you use the 'playlist' (which replaces the old 'recordings' section) you cannot lock a recording, if a channel drops it, tough luck. The news gets worse still, it is super laggy. Finally, there is a near daily problem with image and sound syncing. If you are thinking of switchng to Sky Glass, do not do it!