Sky Glass

[telebox2001]

So for those wishing to take out a new Sky TV subscription, there will essentially be three options: Sky Q, Sky Glass or the standalone puck (for now, let's call it Sky Stream). Fair enough, as they all do different things, but I wonder if this isn't getting a bit... Fragmented? Complicated? I wonder how long Sky will support and update the Q platform now. Clearly the endgame is that they move over to IPTV, ie Glass or Stream, in the same way that Q killed Sky+ HD.

The big plus with Sky Glass is simplicity.  The convention is you have a TV, a Sound Bar (often with a separate sub) and then a Sky box wired up to a satellite dish on the side of your house, or a Virgin box wired into the underground network - either way, to bring that wiring into the television area of your home is very intrusive.  Then the telly, the soundbar, the box etc. all need their own plugs, it's all connected together by a jungle of HMDI and/or optical leads and then if you want 5.1, atmos etc. you've then got even more cabling!

For some people, an all-in-one box with one power cable coming out the back will be like a breath of fresh air.  I'm not sure how many people would take Sky subscriptions over IP using their existing telly when those options are more-or-less already available via NOW (OK the playlist feature etc. aren't there but still)

That said I do see an argument for moving away from satellite distribution which is still enormously expensive.

What would really be useful is a legal way of having Freeview delivered by IP, which as far as I'm aware doesn't yet exist.  I could see this being very useful in kids/spare bedrooms etc. where portable aerials aren't up to the task they were in the analogue days and, again, not everyone wants to run coax cable from the roof all over the house. That's before we get onto opening up the full bouquet of services to areas restricted to Freeview Lite! 

As far as I'm aware, there's only the black market options (your MAG/Android boxes etc.) offering this (alongside illegal feeds of all the subscription content of course!) 

If you had something like a Raspberry Pi or even an app one could sideload onto NOW, Firestick etc. that could plug straight into a TV's HDMI and USB ports, hook up to WiFi and off you go, it could be a game changer.

[Larry the Loafer]

What would really be useful is a legal way of having Freeview delivered by IP, which as far as I'm aware doesn't yet exist.  I could see this being very useful in kids/spare bedrooms etc. where portable aerials aren't up to the task they were in the analogue days and, again, not everyone wants to run coax cable from the roof all over the house. That's before we get onto opening up the full bouquet of services to areas restricted to Freeview Lite!

What are the legalities surrounding Freeview over IP? I often wondered why it doesn't exist yet, considering how we already have Sky Go. Their advertising implies you can download their app and watch what you want, but from when I tried it myself, it was a lot more complicated than that.

[gottago]

What would really be useful is a legal way of having Freeview delivered by IP, which as far as I'm aware doesn't yet exist.  I could see this being very useful in kids/spare bedrooms etc. where portable aerials aren't up to the task they were in the analogue days and, again, not everyone wants to run coax cable from the roof all over the house. That's before we get onto opening up the full bouquet of services to areas restricted to Freeview Lite!

What are the legalities surrounding Freeview over IP? I often wondered why it doesn't exist yet, considering how we already have Sky Go. Their advertising implies you can download their app and watch what you want, but from when I tried it myself, it was a lot more complicated than that.

This DS thread shows what's currently being tested on BT, a lot of it is in HD. This is something that was suggested as a future Freeview Play feature so hopefully it will be rolling out on more boxes in the near future: https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion...ams-active

I'm surprised more of the Freeview Play TV apps don't offer live channels considering they already offer them via their websites and phone apps. I think on iPlayer and My5 let you watch live but none of the others. You'd think this would be particularly beneficial to UKTV given none of their channels are in Freeview Lite areas.

[Rdd]

Launches in Ireland on August 25th, interestingly including some sort of limited access to the BBC iPlayer to make up for lack of recording.

[WillPS]

Launches in Ireland on August 25th, interestingly including some sort of limited access to the BBC iPlayer to make up for lack of recording.

I wonder why they're doing that rather than just doing the (default) cloud record behaviour?

[KK!]

The big plus with Sky Glass is simplicity.  The convention is you have a TV, a Sound Bar (often with a separate sub) and then a Sky box wired up to a satellite dish on the side of your house, or a Virgin box wired into the underground network - either way, to bring that wiring into the television area of your home is very intrusive.  Then the telly, the soundbar, the box etc. all need their own plugs, it's all connected together by a jungle of HMDI and/or optical leads and then if you want 5.1, atmos etc. you've then got even more cabling!

The thing is most/many houses interested in Sky have that infrastructure anyway.

[Rdd]

Launches in Ireland on August 25th, interestingly including some sort of limited access to the BBC iPlayer to make up for lack of recording.

I wonder why they're doing that rather than just doing the (default) cloud record behaviour?

Not sure, possibly to dispel any complaints from U.K. viewers if ROI viewers were able to record BBC programmes but U.K. viewers couldn’t?

[Aplus1]

I wonder why they're doing that rather than just doing the (default) cloud record behaviour?

Not sure, possibly to dispel any complaints from U.K. viewers if ROI viewers were able to record BBC programmes but U.K. viewers couldn’t?

That'll almost certainly be at the BBC's specific request - likely that they want people accessing material via BBC infrastructure and services directly and not via a third party.

[London Lite]

Presumably as part of the distribution deal with BBC Studios for Sky Glass in ROI, they've allowed access to the iPlayer for VOD access.