Sky Stream - my worst decision in decades

[DC110770]

I agree. I've had Sky since 2004 and Sky Stream is by far the worst product I've had. 

As a former Sky Q customer, which I had since I can remember, I never had any issues. The recording was great, picture perfect and you could series link without adverts. I only swapped as Sky wanted an obscene amount of money to stay with Q. I decided to take stream instead of Glass and I already have OLED tvs. 

It will take sometime to get use to it but that doesn't excuse the poor performance of this puck.  The recordings or playlist often encounters issues. Frozen picture, no picture, buffering & problems with the sound (lip syncing).

I have sky ultrafast broadband, cat 6 Ethernet in every room. I have just the lounge hardwired. I should not get any problems at all but yet, I do. 

Every advert - not available comes up! 

If Virgin didn't have coax cabling, I would have binned this off! Wish I just paid the extra and went with Q!

painful

[Jason+Golding]

@DC110770 Strange thing, is I have completely the opposite experience to you, I love stream and would never go back to Q or satellite delivery 

[Jporch316]

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@DC110770 wrote:

I agree. I've had Sky since 2004 and Sky Stream is by far the worst product I've had. 

As a former Sky Q customer, which I had since I can remember, I never had any issues. The recording was great, picture perfect and you could series link without adverts. I only swapped as Sky wanted an obscene amount of money to stay with Q. I decided to take stream instead of Glass and I already have OLED tvs. 

It will take sometime to get use to it but that doesn't excuse the poor performance of this puck.  The recordings or playlist often encounters issues. Frozen picture, no picture, buffering & problems with the sound (lip syncing).

I have sky ultrafast broadband, cat 6 Ethernet in every room. I have just the lounge hardwired. I should not get any problems at all but yet, I do. 

Every advert - not available comes up! 

If Virgin didn't have coax cabling, I would have binned this off! Wish I just paid the extra and went with Q!

painful

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@DC110770 

Try it on WiFi - I find it a much better experience ......

[MarkGoldsmith]

I'm with you on this one.

i went from Sky + to Stream a few weeks ago and absolutely love it. 

I know it's completely personal preference but I don't mind the odd small technical hiccup for new technology.

what a lot of people don't understand if that completely new tech takes years and years to get right as history shows. Look how poor Digitial TV or how long it took smartphones to actually get to a good point that they become mainstream and replaced the amazing Nokia 3200s :).

people who say, yeah it's been 2 years since Sky Glass was released it should be perfect, I don't think truly understand the history of technology and technological devices.

My only complaint is that the new services should be cheaper as the technology is still in its infancy and we are all still essentially testers to help Sky identity and fix bugs that come up from everyone's day to day usage of the devices.

[Really+Angry]

Exactly my thoughts. It's merely a shockingly written app that just connects to other existing (and better written) apps.

The interaction with those other apps is limited to non-existent. Sky should rather just have written a good app that can interact with other apps effectively.

This fixation with forcing their own hardware on subscribers is outdated now, especially when "The Puck" is such a load of garbage.

I think it's time to investigate an alternative collection of individual apps and subscriptions that give me the viewing I'm looking for. I'm sure it'll be more cost-effective and it certainly couldn't be more of a software train smash than this Sky nonsense!

[J_Tyler]

I, and others, have been saying it for years - all Sky need to do is offer UHD & Atmos streams via the NOW app, then the customer has the choice of what hardware to use. 

They themselves even suggested it would happen over two years ago, but with the introduction of Glass/Stream it's all gone a bit quiet as they force their cheap'n'cheerful hardware on us. Thanks Comcast.

Not all of us want the whole Sky Entertainment OS experience, we just want the programmes in as good a quality as possible. They could charge a £10-£15 Boost Premium subscription for UHD/Atmos via NOW and lots of people (me included) would gladly pay it, purely for the experience of not having to use a Stream puck. 

[Phizza921]

Yeah I'm done with Stream. While a good idea in principle, the hardware is awful, slow and clunky and I find myself going back to using the apps on my smart tv. 

Its failed the wife test. She struggles to find her away around the interface and resume shows etc. an another annoying thing is that it won't play watched episodes back from the start which is handy for kids watching the same stuff over and over.

I opened NowTV app last night and it was just so easy to watch what I wanted and with No ads!

I can't believe I can't get the option of no ads with stream which is supposed to be a superior product.

as far as UHD /Atmos go, I'll just buy that film from iTunes Store or on disc if I really want the super dipper experience..

im calling sky to cancel today..

[PSC133]

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@J_Tyler wrote:

I, and others, have been saying it for years - all Sky need to do is offer UHD & Atmos streams via the NOW app, then the customer has the choice of what hardware to use. 

They themselves even suggested it would happen over two years ago, but with the introduction of Glass/Stream it's all gone a bit quiet as they force their cheap'n'cheerful hardware on us. Thanks Comcast.

Not all of us want the whole Sky Entertainment OS experience, we just want the programmes in as good a quality as possible. They could charge a £10-£15 Boost Premium subscription for UHD/Atmos via NOW and lots of people (me included) would gladly pay it, purely for the experience of not having to use a Stream puck. 

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That would be an excellent solution but extremely unlikely to happen as Sky/Comcast's business model is geared towards supplying their own sub-standard hardware.

A glimmer of hope might be if they introduced better quality products in the future with built in storage that would allow increased buffering of the streams to counteract internet glitches.  Viewing TV over the internet will become the norm in future.  Expensive satellite broadcasting is likely to cease.

[Phizza921]

Just to add to my post. I'd be more forgiving if they were regulary updating the os to iron out bugs but I've not had one update in the month I've had the device. Also have discovered that a Apple TV+ app Dolby vision bug hasn't been sorted but it's been around since July. If Sky are going to continue to maintain and support their products/plarforms, I'm out..

[Floydianslip]

@J_Tyler They won't offer UHD/Atmos on the Now app and probably never will, they have hardware to sell,  Now is an App, not hardware.

[J_Tyler]

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@Floydianslip wrote:

@J_Tyler They won't offer UHD/Atmos on the Now app and probably never will, they have hardware to sell,  Now is an App, not hardware.

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Why would they have even bothered mentioning it back in May 2021, when Glass/Stream was already designed/being manufactured?

https://www.pocket-lint.com/tv/news/now-tv/156945-sky-s-now-plans-include-4k-hdr-as-part-of-boost-ad... 

Fraser Stirling, Sky's head of products said: "the beauty of the Boost add-on is that [4K HDR] is something we can really invest in."

I'm convinced they will offer it in the not too distant future. Like I said, not everyone wants Stream or Entertainment OS - they just want some Sky content at a better quality and will happily pay for it. 

If Sky/Comcast want to compete with all the other app-based streamers, then 4K & Atmos from NOW will happen. Trust me. 

[TimmyBGood]

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@Phizza921 wrote:

 but I've not had one update in the month I've had the device.

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That's not surprising: the initial update during setup would have replaced the factory firmware with the current one.

[Bordonbert]

I've responded in this thread before and was kind of branded as some sort of ungrateful moaner.  Things have moved on and it is worth putting something here so others do not feel alone in their misery.

My Sky stream Puck situation is considerably worse than before.  Is this the worst decision I have made, I stand by my original hearty "YES"!  The Puck hardware is not the problem, the problem is in the poor level of programming.  Here is a latest ridiculous error which makes it such a frustrating experience.

Thanks to a latest update of the Puck's software I have virtually lost touch with my Favourites list.

1)  Run the puck up.

2) Select View All.

3)  The list appears and select Favourites.

4)  Select a channel from that list which begins 1, 2, 3....

5)  Watch it for a few minutes.

6)  Press "Back" button to go to channel listing and I am taken back to the full channel list which begins 101, 102, 103..., not Favourites as I had started from.

7)  Press Left to bring up list selection as used to be the function before - NOTHING, no response to handset!

8 )  From this point on I need a series of Back button pushes followed by View All selections to take me through a number of opening screen variants.  Each screen is missing something, either the current channel selection, or the trailer pic for it, or the description of it, and needs a new selection of View All which only takes me one step further into the labyrinth.

9)  Eventually I will get back to a start screen where the channel selection options list including Favourites is offered when View All is chosen.

The system now simply locks up randomly for no apparent reason and will not respond to any button pushes at all.  After an inordinate length of time, counted in minutes not seconds, it can suddenly kick back into life and it then acts on EVERY BUTTON PUSH MADE DURING THE DEAD TIME!  This shows it is not the handset connection at fault as the handset does not store any commands at all.  The puck is receiving and queueing them but is in a state where it is locked up in a progamming loop.  When that lockup clears each of the stored commands is acted on.

The 2x 6x 12x 30x scan forwards and backwards has become even worse, though I could not have predicted it would be able to become less usable than it already was.  It is now at the stage where it is virtually impossible to use.  It sometimes refuses to appear at all, then, when you have resigned yourself to waiting for real time catch up, it jumps into life and starts up with a combination of the button presses you have aleady made.  And it is now unresponsive to any more button presses cancelling it for a period of time, often minutes not seconds.  When it reaches real tiome it now has lost the ability to run back to a previous point at all.  You simply cannot "View From Start" and run forwards to any point in time without losing control totally.  I should also point out that it also refuses to respond to the On/Off button during these problems too!

Of course, there are still people who will "have no problems in use" and who can't understand my (our) griping about it.  I now suspect that may simply be due to their not using these functions, "View All" is no issue and if your viewing is time linear and you don't try to view from start or run forwards or back you just won't see that problem.  It doesn't mean it doesn't exist and that those who are driven mad by it are idiot moaners.

This is without a doubt the worst implemented most cumbersome and unreliable User Interface I have ever seen and I used to design and program them!  It isn't a hardware issue in the handset and there seems to be no connection issue that I can find, it is the rank amateur programming of the puck which is the problem!!!

[18BTDavidY]

@Bordonbertmuch more eloquently put than I could, but I recognise all the things you list.

[PeterU]

Couldn’t agree more. I’ve been with Sky for years, and Sky stream sucks for all the reasons mentioned.

It just doesn’t work consistently. Keep having to reboot. Now stuck on “No subscription” On the phone to Sky , stuck in a que for 20 mins now.

It’s not wifi speeds or signal. 200mb download plus.

Anyone thinking of moving from Sky+ to Sky stream, my opinion is, DONT