Unable to watch live UHD content in UHD when selecting watch from start

[Frustrated_]

Frustrated, as the quality of a once premium product is now below par. This was never an issue on Q and worked when Stream first came out. It’s like there is zero meaningful QA being run before rolling out software to customers,  when basic functionality, like chosen viewing format, no longer functions.

Started watching time delayed playback of the NZ v ARG in UHD. Accidentally changed channels, but when attempting to go back to the UHD stream through watch from start, only the HD stream was accessible.

This is the straw that broke the camel’s back… between trickplay that is completely unusable and an absolute joke - how can you have a PVR product without trickplay - and PVR functionality that is hit and  miss.

[GD1]

@Frustrated_ Sky stream most certainly isn't a PVR and the mistake is thinking it is.

By defination a PVR is a hard drive system, Sky stream is not.

[lettice]

Not totally correct.
Sky Stream has one big advantage over Sky Q.
Assume you are talking about not seeing the uhd prompt all the time to launch the uhd from an hd channel.

The three UHD channels that Sky uses (from that prompt on the hd channel you see) as part of the Sky Sports uhd football content, uhd cricket and more recently uhd darts are all available to watch and add to playlist from their own uhd channels, 903 and 904
There is a third 906 that is mostly used for Eurosport uhd content.

You can just use your remote to change to them easily or use the Sky remote voice option.

One recent advantage of using the Sky remote Voice option, came with the addition of the new Sky Sports app and all that previous red button extra stream/info transferring to it.

If while watching the uhd broadcast for football and F1, you can open up the Sky Sports app at anytime by selecting the four coloured button top right on your remote to see the football recap or tables for the football, for F1 see the multiple extra F1 race control streams.

Then when you want to return to watching the uhd just use your Sky remote voice option within the app naming one of the channels above or the F1 uhd channel and you are straight back to the live uhd stream.

By the way, that voice option above also works for the sport content that is on an hd channel, like the golf and tennis, you can do the same to move from the Sky Sports golf hd and Sky Tennis hd channels into the app, watch extra streams and see standing and leaderboards etc. 
Once again within the app just say Sky Sports golf or Sky Sport Tennis or the channel number to return to the live hd channel.

[lettice]

The NZ v Arg match would have been on the Sky Sports Main Event UHD channel only in uhd.
If you do Watch from start on that channel now, it still goes back to the match, but yes may not be the actual beginning..

Rugby and golf that show in uhd on that channel are an upscaled hd to uhd, but still present a good pq. It is the channel that provides the upscale, not the original broadcast source.
That channel only offers a selection of sporting content in that upscaled format, you could say its a kind of teaser mix, so its intention is not to be a permanent uhd option for those sports.
Any playlisting will only present its base broadcast output; a true uhd broadcast (football/cricket/F1) will present a hd/uhd recording, but for the case of the Sky Sports Main Event UHD channel, upscaled hd to uhd, it will just present the hd playlist recording.

[TimmyBGood]

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@Frustrated_ wrote:

 - how can you have a PVR product without trickplay - and PVR functionality that is hit and  miss.

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As @GD1 identifies, Stream is by definition not a personal(ized) video recorder

Unfortunately Sky has always used the word 'recording' rather too loosely in the context of Stream marketing

Something like 'hybrid cloud recorder' might have been somewhat more accurate, but in reality there's probably no individual recording at all.

[Frustrated_]

Um @GD1 ,actually it is 100% PVR, except the storage is not local to device but rather cloud based. I have assets in my playlist, which never had any VOD counterparts to replace it with after a broadcast ended and as such will always resided as an nPVR asset within it. 

Trust me when I say my frustrations are well founded and my understanding of the expected behaviour is sound. 

While I appreciate the effort of trying to explain the product to me, it is not needed. Instead, this is meant as a prompt to Sky to start proactively doing something about the quality down spiral that that they are now in, especially now that I am a paying customer.  

[Mister_Dalek]

@Frustrated_ 

It's a PVR in a very loose sense of the acronym.

It's not a Personal video recording device because any cloud 'recordings' are not personal to you.

You cannot personally delete them.

Such 'recordings' are merely a single stored file on a server, a copy of a section of a broadcast stream that is bookmarked from metadata so that any other customer who has set that particular programme to 'record' can stream it too. 

There is no individual cloud storage for every Sky Streaming TV customer. If there was we would know how big that storage was and would be charged accordingly for it. We would be able to select and delete our individual recording and know how much storage space we have. We don't. Because it doesn't exist. 

There are true DVR services in the USA which do offer true personal cloud recording capability. These allow a PVR type experience which the individual customer has to pay extra for. You pay more for larger online storage. You can add and delete personal recordings from your own personal cloud storage. You cannot on Sky Stream. All you are deleting is a small log file on your Sky account telling the server that you once tagged a show you wanted to watch again. This may appear to be a recording unique to you, but it isn't. It's just a file on a server.