Sky Glass

[Tv12345]

If it’s a rebranded XiOne box then won’t it have cloud recording? I’m sure I read online that the xione box has it.

It has been rumoured that cloud recording will be offered to UK customers, yes. Up to 1,000 hours.

That’s brilliant thank you for letting me know

[RR]

Virgin's V6 box also requires Virgin Media's broadband, it is their earlier boxes that didn't.

[Rdd]

Virgin's V6 box also requires Virgin Media's broadband, it is their earlier boxes that didn't.

VM Ireland never had the V6 (which is almost physically identical, at least in the casing, to the TV360 anyway, but with different software), there was the awful Horizon instead! But it was a massive change and while other providers (eir and Vodafone) always required you to have their BB it was different because they were telecoms providers first whereas with VM they are the decendant of cable companies who have been in the market decades (almost 50 years in some areas) offering TV and never had a BB requirement till now. But I digress. It really limits competition if your tv provider selection determines your broadband. With broadband you may have differences in speed, reliability, etc but it’s the same internet on offer. Your TV provider selection may well be determined by that one channel that you absolutely have to have and only one provider offers it (example: in ROI LaLigaTV is exclusive to Sky) and you may now be stuck with a broadband provider you don’t want because of that.

[Lewis]

Wonder how many TB (on averages etc) 1000 hours equals?

[Neil Jones]

Wonder how many TB (on averages etc) 1000 hours equals?

Depends whether you record SD, HD or UHD.

[MrBiggieSMLZ]

I know this may sound pretty unlikely, but is it possible that the "something magical" could be a major corporate rebrand and reorganisation of Comcast to the Sky name, in a move which effectively dissolves NBCUniversal - even though NBC could continue to function - as a brand, similarly to Disney's ABC?

[i.h]

I can't decide whether they'd market it as a "compensation" service for those who want a dish but can't get it, or a premium option for those who don't like having dishes stuck to their house. Both would have very different pricing, hypothetically. They'd also need to consider the liability of having your TV go off when your internet goes awry as well as your wi-fi. I can't see people would want to pay a premium to be exposed to that vulnerability.

In Austria at least, Sky X completely replaced Now TV (or Sky Ticket as it was known there) and was aimed at the same segment of the market and priced accordingly. In Germany it seems to be a bit different and what they seem to be doing there is marketing Sky Q IP towards households that can’t get satellite. In that market, it costs the same as satellite, comes with the same contract but has less features (no PVR/live pause etc). I’m not sure why you’d plump for the IP version over the satellite version if you can get both, I know in the early days of Sky some people had a thing about being seen with a dish on their house but that’s hardly still a thing in this day and age.

There was such a thing as avoiding dish blight on (primarily) residential blocks, the idea being you take all the individual dishes down and just have one communal one stuck in the appropriate corner to feed all the properties on that block. Think I mentioned before I can drive past at least two blocks that have a neat collection of about eight dishes on on the one wall with a communal aerial on the building as well, which may be a sign of how successful that policy was.

Many communal systems haven't been upgraded since they were installed, so they might not support even a dual feed Sky+ let alone the "wideband" feeds needed for Q. If building management won't get anyone in to do it (or can't agree on who should pay for it), then tenants/owners have to take it into their own hands

[JetixFann450]

I know this may sound pretty unlikely, but is it possible that the "something magical" could be a major corporate rebrand and reorganisation of Comcast to the Sky name, in a move which effectively dissolves NBCUniversal - even though NBC could continue to function - as a brand, similarly to Disney's ABC?

I doubt it's anything to do with a rebrand of Comcast into Sky. When they announced the boxes, it had Xfinity branding, If and when Comcast does rebrand into Sky, it probably won't be in October.

[BcastCornwall]

It’s interesting that there’s been ‘work’ going on with the NOW product in the past weeks, some of the streams I’ve got onto have been superb so a merger of these onto any Generic IPTV service seems likely. I’m now 99pct certain that the tracks are leading to what’s being discussed being revealed on 7th Oct.

Although on the surface no 4K seems likely, the ease some of the boxes that are on the market handle all flavours of 4K it’d be most unlikely if Sky failed to offer it on a NOW+/Sky Q- product.

We can write off any talk of a Comcast rebrand, there’s zero speculation in the media that this is imminent.

[Lewis]

Wonder how many TB (on averages etc) 1000 hours equals?

Depends whether you record SD, HD or UHD.

That's a good question; I was thinking HD, as it's the next step for majority of channels

[Neil Jones]

Wonder how many TB (on averages etc) 1000 hours equals?

Depends whether you record SD, HD or UHD.

That's a good question; I was thinking HD, as it's the next step for majority of channels

Well the Sky+ boxes were capable of doing 350hrs of HD on a 2Tb box (though of course it must be remembered a chunk of the capacity was reserved for the Anytime/Showcase/pushed content (something like 500Gb for the 2Tb boxes) and so the full capacity wasn't available) and over 1100 hours of SD. I presume Q is the same or similar (considering they all use the same satellites, that probably goes without saying)

So actually 1000 hrs of cloud storage isn't actually that much space wise (a thousand hours at HD will probably only be something like 6Tb of space assuming it uses the same compression as the set-top boxes), and of course 1000Hrs of UHD... that's about 7Gb an hour so you can work that out as to how much space that needs

[Lewis]

Depends whether you record SD, HD or UHD.

That's a good question; I was thinking HD, as it's the next step for majority of channels

Well the Sky+ boxes were capable of doing 350hrs of HD on a 2Tb box (though of course it must be remembered a chunk of the capacity was reserved for the Anytime/Showcase/pushed content (something like 500Gb for the 2Tb boxes) and so the full capacity wasn't available) and over 1100 hours of SD. I presume Q is the same or similar (considering they all use the same satellites, that probably goes without saying)

So actually 1000 hrs of cloud storage isn't actually that much space wise (a thousand hours at HD will probably only be something like 6Tb of space assuming it uses the same compression as the set-top boxes), and of course 1000Hrs of UHD... that's about 7Gb an hour so you can work that out as to how much space that needs

Thanks Neil! Interesting. Not a lot, but it could work for a more budget orientated plan, possibly.

[London Lite]

It’s interesting that there’s been ‘work’ going on with the NOW product in the past weeks, some of the streams I’ve got onto have been superb so a merger of these onto any Generic IPTV service seems likely. I’m now 99pct certain that the tracks are leading to what’s being discussed being revealed on 7th Oct.

Even a friend of mine who doesn't have NOW boost noticed the vast improvement in the quality recently compared to when they last bought a membership.

The 1080p streams on NOW are great now, it's really hard to tell the difference between the linear streams and what NOW are streaming.

[RR]

Do you need storage in full for all customers? Say a thousand people have saved Vigil - couldn't one recording be used to play that out - or, more likely for certain channels - I can imagine the BBC for example being against cloud storage - the customer be pointed to the iPlayer or equivalent.

I understand that means storage would be short term not long term, but that is the desire of certain channels and the legal position of a PVR.

[Brekkie]

Wasn't there a legal issue a few years back, before streaming really took off, with some provider launching a service which was essentially a prototype cloud storage PVR?