Sky stream , honest review

[mirrors90]

Hey all

As I've had sky stream for 3 weeks now, I thought I'd write a honest review as I feel like I've had enough time with it to understand it.

ive got a house with 4 adults , 1 child - the problem with sky q was that 4k only available on one box - meaning I was paying for sky sports 4k but rarely watching !

sky offered me a good deal to swap to stream, so we settled for 3 pucks.

ordered day 1, delivered day 2. No complaints there! Delivered by dpd - so they're not cheaping out with delivery - that's nice.

my internet is 50mb. No issues. Can watch 4k in two rooms , no internet issues. No buffering. Happy with that. This was my main hesitation! 

Setup was difficult. Plug and play? I had all 3 not working out of the box. A quick google and community search led me to the thread on here that if you unplug, press the power button for a few seconds and plug in, it forces update mode and you're away - that worked on all 3,  so we're up and running.

picture quality - in my opinion is much , much better than sky q - the pic quality even on HD is amazing. 

voice control is very good, I say onward and it finds it on Disney plus and I click go and it opens up Disney and is ready to play. That makes it a lot easier to find stuff without scrolling needlessly. Also works on all apps. 

The menus are nice , it favours on demand over live tv , which as a streaming household, suits me to be fair - the live tv is almost hidden away - but again voice control, bbc 1 - you're on. 

playlists - works well. I've added gladiators and the big show to my playlist. Soon as it's over I click on it and it finds it on bbc iPlayer and starts streaming. It's a trade off against recording , and you're reliant on iPlayer - but it's worked well and implemented well, I was unsure on this point before I got it, but happy to report no issues and no drama. Does what it says on the tin.

The remote is nice, feels premium, lights up when you pick it up. Responsive. 

As it's iptv, be warned, your stream is circa 15-30 seconds behind satellite - so if you are watching football - disable those score alerts. A quick tweak, don't have twitter open , and you're good to go. This is something that's not specifically pointed out - so the first game I watched was spoiled 🙈 - TNT seems to perform a lot better than sky in this respect , even on the discovery app.

also, be warned , there's some serious lag on menu surfing. When you say Disney plus - expect a good few seconds of loading. Same with all other apps. 

overall, very good experience , the picture quality improvement is on another level - having all apps on one box is the dream.  No more messing with 3 remotes , one remote , one box. I've not touched my fire box since sky stream as I'm able to watch all the content on my sky box in 4k on any tv in the house.

overall I'd give it 7/10 - it's let down by the lag when opening apps - and the delay on live tv broadcast can become very wide - something you don't see on tnt sports app .

It's off to a very good start , and with updates it will easily surpass sky q - I'm very happy with it and the decision to swap to it . I read a lot of negativity about it which is why I only just bit the bullet - but now I couldn't imagine going back to Q.

Hopefully that's fair and balanced and anyone who had any questions , just ask and I'll answer them !

[Zinc+alloy]

Hi mirror 90 

Thanks for your stream review I have been thinking of changing to stream from sky q 

I find picture quality average on HD & only slightly better uhd is the picture quality 

On stream a big improvement? Also how is the Audio on stream Dolby Atmos etc 

Many thanks 

[mirrors90]

Hey @Zinc+alloy 

Yes, in my experience it's the world apart.

The sound is more "punchy" and the pic is really improved.

[mirrors90]

@Zinc+alloy But balance it with the negatives.

The navigation speed is painful. Lots of loading when jumping in and out of apps

The delay in live broadcast due to IPTV

[MarkGoldsmith]

The delay is sports streaming on Sky sports should improve. As has been reported elsewhere on this forum Sky are testing new streams which are designed to improve that delays.

[mirrors90]

@MarkGoldsmith I thought so - would it be fair to call it a "beta" whilst they are testing and refining it?

I'm a big fan of it to be honest, the HLG implementation is much better also - and I don't know if it's just me , the dolby atmos is better.

I'd imagine the menu speed will be fixed in a future hardware update when they add a better processor?

[Zinc+alloy]

Thanks for your feed back I will do more digging but seriously thinking of bitting the bullet 

[mirrors90]

@Zinc+alloy What are your main hesitations?

For me it was lack of recording - so far, the WATCHLIST has worked pretty well - and the broadband requirement - but again, 2x 4k streams on 50mb internet is pretty good - i was worried about that but turns out i didn't need to be!

[MarkGoldsmith]

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@Zinc+alloy wrote:

Thanks for your feed back I will do more digging but seriously thinking of bitting the bullet 

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My impressions of using stream for the last 3 months pretty much match those outlined above by @mirrors90 .

One thing to note is that the continue watching rail can be flaky (Sky are working on fixing that) and the playlist can also be flaky but that's usually down to some broadcasters perhaps taking a while to make shows available on demand. The one that this seems to be a problem with most is ITV X, sometimes shows are immediately available and at other times it can take a day or 2. Also I believe sometimes the metadata used in ITV X goes wrong so new episodes are available on ITV X player but aren't flagged up in the playlist due to the metadata ITV have added to the show being a bit wrong.

[MarkGoldsmith]

@Zinc+alloy Also to note Sky are pretty good with allowing users to switch back over to Sky Q if they don't like Sky Glass/Stream. The streaming platform isn't right for everyone and Sky seem to understand this.

[mirrors90]

@MarkGoldsmith Have you got a link about the delay being worked on please?

[Chloe-W22]

Morning @mirrors90, thanks for taking the time to write this up, I'm going to share this internally with our Product teams 🙂

[John_Hatfield]

I like to record 8 hours of golf and then when wife goes to bed I skip through a lot of it and watch it in 2 hours. Also I might get home 30 mins after football starts and start watching it from beggining....... I can't do this with sky stream unless I wait for it to finish or put the game on live, see the score and select watch from start...... I think it's a step backwards 

[MarkGoldsmith]

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@John_Hatfield wrote:

I like to record 8 hours of golf and then when wife goes to bed I skip through a lot of it and watch it in 2 hours. Also I might get home 30 mins after football starts and start watching it from beggining....... I can't do this with sky stream unless I wait for it to finish or put the game on live, see the score and select watch from start...... I think it's a step backwards 

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If you add the event to your playlist and access it from your playlist you will see a watch live and "watch from start" option.

[Alex+j+o]

Hi,

Great review, need to ditch the satellite as too costly now.  Do you know if it works behind a VPN?  Do you have one that you could test with?  That's a deal breaker for me.

Thanks