With movie and TV streaming services providing huge flexibility surrounding what and where we watch content, it's no wonder that Sky has decided to fight back with its Sky Q platform. This completely re-engineered service is designed to give you a huge amount of flexibility in and outside your house, with a bigger ability to watch different shows and recordings in multiple rooms. In this article, I'm comparing the abilities of Sky Q with the current Sky+ HD box.
Number of recordings
The Sky+ HD box has two tuners, each fed individually by a satellite cable running to the LNB on the satellite dish outside. With two tuners you can record two programmes at the same time. While doing this, you can also watch one of the shows that you're recording, or you can watch an alternative recording. Alternatively, you can record one show and watch a different programme completely. There's a choice of boxes, with the top box providing 2TB of storage.
With Sky Q, there's a choice of two boxes. The high-end Silver box has 2TB of storage and has four dedicated tuners for recording, one dedicated tuner for watching a live show and one tuner dedicated to the picture-in-picture mode. This means that you can record four shows at once while watching two other live channels or a separate recording entirely. There's also the standard Sky Q box, which has 1TB of storage, three tuners for recording and a single tuner for watching live TV. In both cases it's goodbye to scheduling clashes and, not matter how many shows you're recording, you'll still be able to watch live TV.
Cleverly, the new Sky Q boxes do not require any additional cabling: you get by with the same two cables running to the satellite dish. You need a minor modification to the dish, replacing the LNB that the cables plug into, but it's a trivial job that a Sky engineer can do quickly and easily.
Multi-room
With existing Sky+ HD you can sign up for Multiscreen, which costs £11.25 extra per month and includes a free Sky HD box without recording capability that you can put in another room. You can buy additional boxes for more rooms, but each one has to be cabled into the satellite dish, so you need enough spare connectors: most dishes have four connectors. Each additional box works entirely on its own and can't interact with your main Sky+ HD box; this means that you can't watch recordings where you want.
With Sky Q things are much better. For starters Sky Q Mini boxes do not require any additional satellite cabling. Instead, they stream content directly from your main box via your home network: Ethernet or Wi-Fi if you don't have Sky broadband; Ethernet, Wi-Fi or Powerline networking if you have Sky broadband and the new Sky Q hub. You can also watch on tablets using the new Sky Q app (iPad and Android).
Streaming from the main Sky Q box means that you can watch live channels and recordings on your additional boxes, or even move from one to another. For example, you can start watching a recording in your lounge and finish it off in your bedroom.
The Sky Q Silver box has dedicated tuners for two Sky Q Mini boxes and two tablets. The regular Sky Q box has dedicated tuners for one Sky Q Mini box and one tablet. In both cases, multi-room is a lot easier with Sky Q.
Ultra HD 4K
Ultra HD (or 4K as a lot of people refer to it) uses four times the number of pixels as regular Full HD TV: 3,840x2,160 pixels vs 1,920x1,080 pixels. It also offers double the frame rate, at 50fps. The result is smoother and much more detailed footage, as I saw in my BT Sport Ultra HD review. It's no wonder that Sky is interested in the technology and has promised to launch Ultra HD later in the year on the Sky Q Silver box. I'm not sure how it intends to deliver the footage, but given that this box has two free tuners, the likely scenario would be that this TV will be delivered over satellite, making it available to more people than BT Sport, which needs a super-fast internet connection.
Remote control
The Sky+ HD remote control has been around for years and is familiar to millions of homes. It does the job well, but Sky Q introduces a new touch remote, with a touchpad. It should make navigating around the new interface much quicker, but it could take a little while to get used to. I'm going to have to wait until I've got a full review system to really test out how it works.
Interface
Although the Sky+ interface has changed and evolved over the years, it's nowhere near as advanced as the Sky Q interface. Using the more powerful boxes' processor, the new interface is much quicker and slicker to use. Faster search, a home screen that gives you reminders and suggestions for TV shows and a list of recently watched programmes are all way better than what you get with Sky+ HD. On top of that, after launch, Sky Q will have voice search turned on: if it's as good as the Siri search on the new Apple TV, Sky will have a real winner on its hands.
Apps
The Sky+ app is brilliant, letting you manage your box and recordings from your tablet or phone. It also lets you use it as a remote control, selecting what to watch and controlling playback.
The new Sky Q app is more advanced in most ways, but it can't be used as a remote. This is because Sky believes that it would be confusing to use, as you'd have to select which box to control or play content on. Other than that, the app does a lot more, including letting you download recorded shows for offline viewing, letting you take your own content out of the house to watch later. It also provides Sky Go functionality, letting you watch live and on-demand content when you're out and about.
Other content
Sky Q is expandable in a way that Sky+ isn't. At launch, it will have a Vevo app for music videos and YouTube, although other apps should come online after launch: I'd love to see Netflix as well. On top of that, Sky Q also supports AirPlay and Bluetooth, so you can play music directly from your phone. The Sky+ HD supports none of this, nor will it.
Conclusion
There's no doubt that Sky Q is a lot more powerful than its predecessor, and it'll be the top choice for people that watch a lot of premium content and want it available throughout their home. For those that largely watch in the lounge and don't care about Ultra HD, Sky+ HD is still a perfectly good system. Of course, one of the big factors is price, but Sky hasn't released Sky Q pricing yet. I'll update this article when I've got pricing.
