Since the introduction of the PVR, we haven’t really seen anything quite so revolutionary with how we watch and consume TV. That’s all about to change with the introduction of Sky Q (dubbed Fluid Viewing by the company), which is a brand-new platform designed for the way that we watch TV today. From my first glimpse at it, Sky Q looks set to change the way that view premium TV and gives Sky a huge technological advantage over all of its competition. Yes, it is really that big a deal.
What is Sky Q?
Sky Q is a collection of products that form an entirely new TV platform, delivering live and on-demand TV throughout your house and even outside of it. I’ll go through the specific product offerings in detail later, but at the heart of the new system sits the Sky Q box. This replaces your Sky+ HD box with a more powerful PVR that has 12 tuners, a bigger hard disk and is Ultra HD ready. So far, a big improvement but more an evolution; however, it’s how the Sky Q box interacts with everything else that makes it different.
First, you can by the Sky Q Mini box, which wirelessly connects to your Sky Q and lets you watch live TV, on-demand and recordings, all independently and without interrupting your main box. Next, the Sky Q app lets you do all of the same stuff as a Mini, but from your tablet. Everything is seamlessly synced between devices, so you can start watching a programme on one, then continue exactly where you left off on another device. There’s nothing else in the UK that can do this for premium channels.
Top top everything off, there’s a new Sky Q hub, which replaces your router (you have to be a Sky internet subscriber) and gives you 802.11ac Wi-Fi and powerline networking all-in-one; it also turns your Mini boxes into Wi-Fi repeaters, giving you better wireless coverage throughout your home.
The Sky Q Silver and Sky Q boxes
As I mentioned, it’s the Sky Q box that is at the heart of everything, with the Sky Q Silver box the top-of-the-line model. It’s about half the size of the Sky+ HD box but has an incredible 12 tuners inside it. That works out as four tuners for recording, one dedicated to the live channel, one dedicated to picture-in-picture, two dedicated to Q Mini boxes, two dedicated to Q Apps and two spares for future use. That means that no matter what you’re doing elsewhere or recording, you can always choose a fresh live channel to watch. It should mean an end to recording clashes forever.
Cleverly, the box only requires two cables to be run from the satellite dish, and the box can handle decoding the channels. With the old Sky box, each tuner required a dedicated cable. The change is a massive improvement and requires the LNB on the dish to be upgraded. The new LNB is not compatible with Sky+ boxes or Freesat, so once you’ve been engineer upgraded there’s no going back.
Inside is a 2TB hard disk (1.7TB available to customers), which gives you room for around 350-hours of HD programmes. Of course, it can download on-demand programmes at the full broadcast quality (other catch-up services use a reduced-quality streaming version for catch-up), and connect to the Sky Store for movie rental and purchase.
There’s an HDMI 1.4 output (HDCP 1.2), which Sky says will be upgraded after launch to support Ultra HD. Quite how this upgrade works or what it does is yet to be announced, but I'd expect HDMI 2.0 and HDPCP 2.2 for Ultra HD. There’s, intriguingly, an HDMI input as well, although Sky has said that this is for future use.
Below the Silver box is the standard Sky Q box. This has fewer tuners (you can only record three and watch one, and it only supports one Q Mini and one App), and a 1TB hard disk. It’s also not upgradeable to Ultra HD. Both boxes support Bluetooth and AirPlay, so you can stream music to them from your smartphone or tablet.
Sky Q Mini box
If you want the same experience that you get in the living room in other parts of your house, the Sky Q Mini box is the product for you. This box can connect via Wi-Fi (802.11ac), Ethernet or its integrated powerline networking to your Sky Q box, and plugs into a TV via HDMI. It gives you exactly the same interface and experience as the main box, down to letting you set recordings, watch and pause live TV, view any downloaded shows (or start new downloads) and watch your previous recordings. That’s a huge change in how Sky works and even people with multi-room can’t watch recordings on one box elsewhere in the house.
Sky Q Touch Remote and Interface
The brand-new Sky Q Touch Remote is the biggest change to the Sky remote since the service launched. It adds a touchpad, as the name suggests, for quicker navigation and dedicated buttons for search, a new sidebar feature, series-link record and to jump to your recordings. It uses Bluetooth, so you can even hide your Sky Q or Sky Q Mini boxes out-of-side and it will still work. There’s an integrated microphone for voice search, although the feature will not be enabled until after launch.
Of course, Sky has made a huge change to the interface, redesigning it completely for HD (and beyond) TVs and the new remote. One of the big changes is that Recordings (previously Planner) now lets you view Most recent recordings or order them by A-Z. You can also see what’s scheduled to record, and what you’ve downloaded, purchased or rented. In other words, finding your content’s going to be a lot easier.
On the main menu, there’s the new My Q section, which shows you recently watched recordings and episodes of your favourite shows. It makes switching between devices really easy, as you can quickly find what you were watching and continue.
The new sidebar feature lets you access quick information from Sky apps without interrupting your viewing, including Sky News and Sky Sports. New apps can be added, so it’ll be interesting to see how this service evolves. Overall, the new interface is quicker, slicker and neater than the old one: I’ll bring you more information on it when I’ve had a chance to go hands-on with the box.
Sky Q App
The new Sky Q App replicates the new interface and lets you do everything you can do from a Q Mini from your tablet, letting you watch what you want anywhere in your own home. For the first time ever, you can also synchronise recorded and downloaded programmes to your tablet, letting you watch anything offline. You have to be in your home to synchronises and there’s no option to sync over the internet, which means you can’t pull down your latest recordings while you’re away.
New content
While you still get all of the premium content that you most likely signed up to Sky for (HBO TV, sports, films and so on), Sky Q is also expandable and can take apps from other providers. At launch, this means you get YouTube and Vevo music videos; other apps will come although Sky is not saying who it’s doing deals with.
What about Ultra HD?
The big question is, what about Ultra HD, particularly in the wake of BT Sport Ultra HD. Sky has promised that Ultra HD is coming towards the end of 2016 on the Sky Q Silver box and that it will deliver more than just sport. What we don’t know is how Sky intends to do this. It’s possible that the extra tuners in the box may be used together so that Sky can deliver Ultra HD over satellite (this would certainly make 4K available to more people). Alternatively, Sky may have to resort to using broadband, but it’s unclear what the requirements would be and if you’d have to have a Sky internet account. The latter option isn’t so good as it would limit the service to people with fast broadband.
Conclusion
I’m getting a hands-on with Sky Q in the next few weeks, so will be able to bring you more information then, before the service launches in early 2016. Until then, my first impressions are really good: this is a completely different TV platform that changes how we watch premium content. A lot will come down to price, but Sky has not yet announced that.
