Sky stream - is it really this rubbish??

[TK8]

Rubbish! - There's hundreds of thousands of customers not happy and tied into contracts!

You're the [removed] superuser who recomnended people buy power over ethernet adaptors to solve connection issues!!! - Duh!!! The kit should work properly WITHOUT having cistomers buy or set up additional hardware. - ITS EVERYONE ELSE at fault (your puck is too far away, you have cable connection issues, you have other devices interfeering, [removed]! - Just admit it..SKY ARE JUST PANTS [removed]. They pay for a service that doesnt work, off zero support to resolve, [removed] 

Moderator Actions: Removed inappropriate comments and unfounded allegations

[Mark39]

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@TK8 wrote:

There's hundreds of thousands of customers not happy and tied into contracts!

@TK8 you would know that how? Sky Stream works fine here over wifi.

[TimmyBGood]

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@TK8 wrote:

Rubbish! - There's hundreds of thousands of customers not happy and tied into contracts!

The number of posts here over five years don't suggest anything like that scale of problems.  Some users undoubtedly have issues, and Sky will (eventually) accept contract exit where these aren't resolved if a user is persistent.

You're the so called 'superuser' who recomnended people buy power over ethernet adaptors to solve connection issues!!! - Duh!!! The kit should work properly WITHOUT having cistomers buy or set up additional hardware.

WiFi is not a particularly reliable medium: a cabled connection is almost always preferable.

- ITS EVERYONE ELSE at fault (your puck is too far away, you have cable connection issues, you have other devices interfeering, you're wearing the wrong colour socks today!

Are you suggesting distance and interference aren't factors in wireless data transmission?

Just admit it..SKY ARE JUST PANTS and ripping customers off. They pay for a service that doesnt work, off zero support to resolve, and have idiot superusers to defend them.

You might want to review my comments on Sky Glass as a user since it was released to see how I 'defended' the Gen 1 platform: I believe 'barely adequate' was one phrase I used rather frequently.

My Stream pucks by contrast absolutely haven't been a problem: your experience may well be different, because as far as I'm aware you aren't living in my house.

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[TK8]

I refer you to the last line of my previous message. Enough said!

[Hunter2660]

I'm not a "superuser" and now have had the service for over 2 years. I've had few if any problems, and been happy with the service. Having said that I'll be leaving when the new Apple TV box is released, not because of the service itself, but due to the 2 year contract with "hidden" above inflation price rises every April. That was the breaking point for me.

[Angel_Aka]

Not a 'Superuser' here either. I had Sky Glass and Sky Stream for a while. They're kind of fine at a basic level for the mass market they're intended for.
Neither product I would describe as being amazing. They do the job but in terms of value for money I didn't rate either of them highly. 
There are plenty of legal ways to get the same content for less money from other sources. If you don't like the products Sky provide just leave - it's not difficult.  

[TK8]

Thats fair comment. 

You can probably get a sense of my frustration then with Sky, ripping customers off with a system that many many users report. Indeed the exact same issues. 

My annoyance is directed towards so called superusers who say things like, you need to buy this additional hardware to solve your issues. 

If you bought a new car and there was an issue with the breaks, or other hardware you'd expect the dealer to resolve it. Not a superuser to say, you need to go to halfords, get some breaks and fit them yourself. (AKA POE devices) Or we have sold lots of these cars and other people havent had a problem...

If you pay for goods or service, you should receive it. 

Appreciate your honesty.

[stuartmcd]

It's approaching 4 years since the release of Sky Stream and even longer since Sky Glass. It's not really an excuse any more. Ultimately their big sell right now is that you can get 3 of the biggest streamers in one bundle yet their service can't even display the content as intended. I think Sky Stream had all the potential to be an amazing product but there are just some key issues that they need to resolve. 

[TimmyBGood]

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@stuartmcd wrote:

It's approaching 4 years since the release of Sky Stream and even longer since Sky Glass. 

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In the UK, Glass and Stream were released on the same day in October 2021.  The confusion is that for the first year pucks were only available to purchase alongside one of the television sets.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2021/10/sky-uk-unveil-new-sky-glass-streaming-broadband-tv-pla... 

Stream became a standalone product in October 2022, and then switched from sale to loan in February 2023.

[Paul_Riordan]

I moved over to Sky Stream a month or so ago.  Part of the reason for moving was the poor network performance on Sky Q.  Sky Stream seems much better from a network perspective apart from when you start up the boxes.  The boxes have issues getting IP addresses from the router and sadly do not give the option to fix your ip address.  I have managed to do this using my router to do two things 1) fix the ip address by assigning the mac address to an ip address on my router and 2) ensuring the lease time on the router is as long as possible.  This seems to resolve the issues around networking.

The second issue for me is the user interface and navigating to find anything, which takes far too long. I would expect the box to start up where it left off, as opposed to taking 5-8 steps to get to a TV channel.  I know there are a couple of workarounds for this but they do mean learbning the workarounds.

My third issue is to do with recordings/playlist - the whole system seems messed up.  The F1 channel doesn't work properly at all and I seem to get random repeat programmes pushing F1 to the top of the playlist even though there is nothing new to see.  It also doesn't seem to tag the F1 programmes properly so when things are "recorded" you can't find them. Some programmes I mark to record just do not end up on the playlist at all - not just the F1 channel.

As said above this platform has been around for 4 years or so and these issues should have been fixed by now, Some of these issues should be really easy to fix such as the ip address issue - it would be really easy to add a fixed ip address option which would help people to get around their DHCP issues.   

[TimmyBGood]

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@Paul_Riordan wrote:

I would expect the box to start up where it left off, as opposed to taking 5-8 steps to get to a TV channel.

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That's unlikely to happen (just as it never did with Q) : Sky appears to regard the Home screen as being valuable real-estate to land user eyeballs on.

Some of us have long argued that starting up in the numbered EPG channel list should be an Accessibility option.

[RSC86]

We have Sky stream and HATE IT!! constantly crashes, apps load with a black screen and have to do a reset and wait for it all to load and hope for the best, crashes a lot of the time, remote disconnects from Bluetooth and then have to go through the hassle of connecting it back which never works first few times! I think just based on the PUK we will be leaving at the end of our contract! 

can't say it's a faulty box as we have 2 puks and 3 replacements and every single one does the same and I know colleagues and family have similar issues with theirs. I would rather the Q box than this junk. 

[Angel_Aka]

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@RSC86 wrote:

We have Sky stream and HATE IT!! constantly crashes, apps load with a black screen and have to do a reset and wait for it all to load and hope for the best, crashes a lot of the time, remote disconnects from Bluetooth and then have to go through the hassle of connecting it back which never works first few times! I think just based on the PUK we will be leaving at the end of our contract! 

can't say it's a faulty box as we have 2 puks and 3 replacements and every single one does the same and I know colleagues and family have similar issues with theirs. I would rather the Q box than this junk. 

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You can still switch back to Q if Stream doesn't work well for you. 
Give Sky a call and follow their troubleshooting. If nothing improves then they'll revert you to Sky Q on a new 24 month contract or release you from your Stream contract penalty free. 

[gmhaggis]

Although Sky hasn't published any official spec or teardown of the Sky Stream puck, using chatgpt to gather observed behaviour and comparing with other streaming products,  we get an interesting report on answering OP's question.

Is there any unofficial teardown of Sky Stream puck hardware ? 

The conclusions definitiely correlate with my 3+ years experience of being a Sky Stream customer,

• laggy UI peformance, especially when context switching, using "trick" play
• poor HDMI reliabiliyty when connected as part if an AV device chain
• inconsistent behaviour of 4K - eg. periodically will notice that Netflix suddenly only has HD format on all content and then find in Stream's settings video has dropped to 1080.
• periodic audio dropouts - no audio on starting a channel, or drops out on switching to/from adverts.

[TimmyBGood]

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@gmhaggis wrote:

Is there any unofficial teardown of Sky Stream puck hardware ? 

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Well, yes: Stream was launched in October 2021 (which also happened to be at the end of the pandemic) so now being at least a generation behind 'current' streaming hardware wouldn't be a revelation.