Sky Stream is always going to have varying opinions. It has done for over 3 years since it launched. The minute one person comes on with a criticism, several respond with the opposite opinion.
The fact of the matter is that Sky Stream has many more variables compared to Sky+ or Sky Q. The satellite systems rely entirely on Sky installing them and making sure the service is being adequately received.
Sky Stream is entirely customer installed and relies on the customer to maintain a fast and stable broadband network in their home in order for the service to function.
There are many more variables at play here: ISP, type of broadband service, speed of service, WiFi, ethernet, interference, latency, bandwidth, etc, etc. The list goes on. It's not a 'simple' case of dish and cable to a box maintained by Sky any more.
As for the service being 'laggy' - this again has many variables attached to it.
In terms of watching live TV via a Stream puck, I don't really think anyone could describe that part of the experience as laggy. With sufficient broadband speed that part of Entertainment OS works very well. Channel hopping up and down is, I would describe, as pretty quick. Some may disagree, but it's a negligible difference to channel hopping on Sky Q or a TV with Freeview or Freesat built in. We're talking fractions of a second difference. No big deal.
In terms of navigating the UI of Entertainment OS - it can get a little laggy. I've experienced that myself. If the box has been on for a while, the server has been updating in the background, or various apps have been used in succession, it can become noticeably less quick to respond.
We have to remember that most of this OS is server based - very little is happening on the puck hardware itself. It then goes back to the individual customer's broadband network and the variables at play with that. Information needs to go both ways, to and from the Sky server. Just because someone has a super-quick download speed doesn't mean they have a super-quick upload speed. Every button press on your Stream puck remote needs to send a signal not just to the puck but also back up to the server. If that signal to the server isn't quite as fast then the user experience can be interpreted as 'laggy.'
The other key thing is when it comes to using the third party apps on a Stream puck. Again, these are server-based, not stored on the puck itself, so will also be susceptible to the same speed fluctuations from varying up/down network speeds.
I've experienced some very laggy behaviour from the apps, largely from when one has been left open rather than fully exited. They can also take a suspiciously long time to start a stream and buffer to full resolution. I'm comparing this with the same apps on my TV, a Firestick 4K Max and an Apple TV 4K box. These streaming devices all use local storage for the apps themselves and, in general, I find them to be roughly the same in terms of speed of opening an app, but then find they are a lot quicker at starting a stream at full resolution.
The Apple TV 4K box is quickest of them all as it uses a much faster processor than the other devices. It does pretty much everything better than any of the other devices, except live TV or BBC iPlayer. For those things it's nowhere near as good as a Stream puck. It can't provide an EPG with direct live streams of the channels. Yes, there's an app which 'sort of' provides an EPG and will open relevant apps to show live streams but it's slow, takes ages and you cannot channel hop. If live TV and channel hopping is important to you then Sky Stream is perfect (if the variables mentioned earlier are met or overcome of course.)
Apps can lag on any streaming device. I've found that they can grind to a halt, crash completely and go incredibly sluggish on all the devices I've tested. It largely depends on how you use them. The Firestick 4K Max for example will keep apps open in the background, same as with the Stream puck, if you don't select to fully exit them. Over time it becomes very sluggish and then requires you to go into the app settings and force close all open apps. This then clears the RAM cache and restores speed. Same on the Apple TV 4K box. Apps can start to become slow or it'll start taking a while to buffer up to full resolution on some of them, if there are lots of apps still open in the background. There's a very simple method of closing open apps using the remote though, which makes things easier than the Firestick or the Stream puck.
The expectations of Sky Stream and the manner in which it is used also varies between customers. There are always going to be people who can't be bothered or don't want to do the 'housekeeping' necessary to keep the service running as best as it can. They'll be the ones who complain most often. A streaming service just isn't the same as 'watching telly' - it's a very different thing. You can't hammer away at the remote, switching between things, opening apps, going back to live TV, playing a game and not expect it to slow down.
Sky Stream is always going to be a marmite product, at least in its current form. Right now I'm on the fence with it. I like aspects of it, but it's best asset, the EPG and live channel streams, just aren't being used much any more in our household. More and more of what we watch is now becoming app based, and not all these apps are available on the Stream puck. I've been trying out these other streaming devices for a few months now and working out what's best for our household. The longer time goes on, the less relevant Sky Stream and the Entertainment OS running on it becomes...
Will we continue with it? I don't know yet. I'm going to wait and see what Glass Gen2 brings. If there is some kind of platform improvement which is passed on the Stream pucks which makes things like lip sync more reliable, then we probably will. Cost will be a factor. The changes to the NOW app will be interesting to see next month too.
Changes are afoot... and we know that most people don't like change.
