Sky Glass, anyone tried it yet?

Sky Glass or should it be called radio rentals for the 21st Century. It seems another trick to tie you into long term contracts. from reading the terms briefly, you loan the TV for 48 months. so if you want to change to virgin before the 48 months are over you might need to buy a new tv. The TV looks quite chunky not something I would want on the wall. Your relying on WIFI for the connection as well there doesn't seem to be a lan port on the TV. it doesnt appeal to me as I have a decent OLED TV with a wired connection to a pfsense box utilising 1gig virgin, and I cant see it appealing to many people with existing 4k TV's. The actual Glass TV is half decent looks like samsung quantum dot tech but ultimately your relying on sky broadband and their supplied wifi router.
 
S7DiscoDown said:
I looked at it. The TV is probably under spec by the standards of others. Also looks pretty thick as I'd have it wall mounted.

That said most people don't overly care about specs etc. A 4k TV is a 4k TV (although they ain't). I do like the idea of sky being built into the TV and no box or dish.

You can get sky go so I've often wondered why they haven't gone wi fi (no dish) before now. Just a wi fi box and sync tv to it. I guess the only issue is if wi fi goes down you've lost the channels. Then again mine hardly ever drops so not a big issue I guess.

I'll look forward to an update as to what it's like. I actually went to cancel sky the other day and as usual with in 30mins I'd signed a new 18 month contract..... A few quid saved and suckered by a loverly Irish accent on the other end😂
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Ditto, except swap Irish for Boro accent. In fact the last three times I’ve tried to cancel Sky I’ve ended up with another contract after being on the phone to a Boro fan for an hour. It must just be coincidence mustn’t it???
 
ThatFragranceGuy said:
If any users do any gaming, it's not the best for that either as it doesn't have hdmi2.1, only does 60fps at 4k and doesn't support a lot of gaming features (which are beneficial in other ways too)
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The Whathifi article you posted seemed to say that it does have hdmi2.1? (I haven't looked elsewhere for the spec though).
 
I like the look of it so far but you can’t record just use on demand , so you cant record something and fast forward the ads . I think there will be an option to lay £5 a month to eliminate ads after one yr .
It will tick a lot of boxes for most people one being nit needing wires down the side of the house plus a dish .
 
I assume it is going to be a very upgraded Now TV offering. I asked the bloke at the stand in the Hill Street Centre about it as I wondered if Sky were looking to phase out the expensive satellite systems but he seemed to think not.

With Now you get a big delay due to it being streamed through your broadband system, so you will have to ensure that you are in a part of Teesside where you can get good speeds. Do you get a discount for tying it into the Sky broadband?
 
I'm in Essex, but classed as greater London urban area, so get pretty good WiFi here. Tend to get between 45-50Mbps on average, so luckily the Internet speed has not been an issue for me. Probably won't suit everyone, but for me it seems like a decent solution, tv which is better than I have, save space by putting it on the wall so no TV stand or box, don't need my soundbar anymore(speakers not working on my tv) and not costing a lot more, my Mrs has been with sky 11 years so we wouldn't be changing anyway, I don't have a games console I play a few games on my laptop like FM or total war or Civ so that part doesn't effect me, I watch a Film or listen to a bit of music on my tv on an evening when kids are in bed so don't really use a TV a lot. It just happens that I got a decent deal with this TV and it suited my needs, plus its convenient as it just comes out of the bank monthly and it's all done. As people have mentioned I probably could of got a better deal by buying TV separate but it really wasn't a priority(got a 7 week old baby, so TV would of been way down the list), it just happened to come along at the right time and fit in my budget and caused me little hassle to sort out.
 
Druss_The_Legend said:
I'm in Essex, but classed as greater London urban area, so get pretty good WiFi here. Tend to get between 45-50Mbps on average, so luckily the Internet speed has not been an issue for me. Probably won't suit everyone, but for me it seems like a decent solution, tv which is better than I have, save space by putting it on the wall so no TV stand or box, don't need my soundbar anymore(speakers not working on my tv) and not costing a lot more, my Mrs has been with sky 11 years so we wouldn't be changing anyway, I don't have a games console I play a few games on my laptop like FM or total war or Civ so that part doesn't effect me, I watch a Film or listen to a bit of music on my tv on an evening when kids are in bed so don't really use a TV a lot. It just happens that I got a decent deal with this TV and it suited my needs, plus its convenient as it just comes out of the bank monthly and it's all done. As people have mentioned I probably could of got a better deal by buying TV separate but it really wasn't a priority(got a 7 week old baby, so TV would of been way down the list), it just happened to come along at the right time and fit in my budget and caused me little hassle to sort out.
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If you have the tv, 4k package, and another tv in another room using the service, apparently that will require 45mb/s of your bandwidth from one review I read. That's a lot for many who may be on fttc 70ish mb packages. Even without the extra tv pick, what happens if someone starts downloading a torrent or game update or speeds aren't hitting maximum?
 
Cuthbert said:
The Whathifi article you posted seemed to say that it does have hdmi2.1? (I haven't looked elsewhere for the spec though).
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Yeah you are right they have 2.1 but. Or the features associated with it;

"Looking at the TV’s specs there’s no advanced gaming features such as Auto Low Latency Mode (ALLM) or Variable Refresh Rate (VRR). There’s no information on a game mode but we’ve asked Sky for confirmation."

& it's still locked to a max of 4k@60fps so would be a no from me for future proofing purposes

consoles and PCs can already output better than that.
 
skys base tv package is now called ultimate and consists of sky tv and SD netflix. you still have to pay £11 month extra to get UHD content
 
Glover_elbow said:
Sky Glass or should it be called radio rentals for the 21st Century. It seems another trick to tie you into long term contracts. from reading the terms briefly, you loan the TV for 48 months. so if you want to change to virgin before the 48 months are over you might need to buy a new tv. The TV looks quite chunky not something I would want on the wall. Your relying on WIFI for the connection as well there doesn't seem to be a lan port on the TV. it doesnt appeal to me as I have a decent OLED TV with a wired connection to a pfsense box utilising 1gig virgin, and I cant see it appealing to many people with existing 4k TV's. The actual Glass TV is half decent looks like samsung quantum dot tech but ultimately your relying on sky broadband and their supplied wifi router.
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This is incorrect! You can have the Sky Glass TV without having a Sky Subscription. You own TV rather than renting it!
 
It is a monthly cost, and that cost is greater than buying a tv or equivalent spec, so it is rent to own basically - you pay for it over the life of the contract and then some.

can't see why you would want a tv that thick without sky, but you can.
 
ThatFragranceGuy said:
It is a monthly cost, and that cost is greater than buying a tv or equivalent spec, so it is rent to own basically - you pay for it over the life of the contract and then some.

can't see why you would want a tv that thick without sky, but you can.
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You can pay for it out right and only pay for your subscription or pay over 4 years in what is basically an interest free loan. In fact, by doing it over the four years, the TV actually works out cheaper, not by much about £20/30

Personally i would never get one for some of the reasons you have already said. It also doesn't record as it doesn't have a built in HDD. It just sets a "bookmark" to the tv show and opens through its channels on demand service.
 
supermfc said:
You can pay for it out right and only pay for your subscription or pay over 4 years in what is basically an interest free loan. In fact, by doing it over the four years, the TV actually works out cheaper, not by much about £20/30

Personally i would never get one for some of the reasons you have already said. It also doesn't record as it doesn't have a built in HDD. It just sets a "bookmark" to the tv show and opens through its channels on demand service.
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Yep, and after 12 months of ownership you can add £5 a month to skip adds, that's a huge annoyance for me

if you're paying for it over 4 years you have nearly zero bargaining power to leave them for another provider and negotiate your contract down as they'll know you aren't going to want to keep paying for it without the benefits
 
A few things to note about Sky glass is if you have a broadband outage using this system you lose all access to your Sky TV channels ( obviously not the case if you use a Dish).

You’ll need a minimum broadband download speed of 10Mbps to use Sky Glass (HD Streaming), rising to 25Mbps for 4K and 35Mbps for two Sky Glass 4K systems.

May be proved wrong but unless the sell the STB ( pucks as they refer to them) as standalone units then I cannot see this being a success. It has a market but for a tech savvy consumer this is not a route that they would enter.
 
Lightweight said:
A few things to note about Sky glass is if you have a broadband outage using this system you lose all access to your Sky TV channels ( obviously not the case if you use a Dish).

You’ll need a minimum broadband download speed of 10Mbps to use Sky Glass (HD Streaming), rising to 25Mbps for 4K and 35Mbps for two Sky Glass 4K systems.

May be proved wrong but unless the sell the STB ( pucks as they refer to them) as standalone units then I cannot see this being a success. It has a market but for a tech savvy consumer this is not a route that they would enter.
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I don't think they are aiming it at the tech savvy. If they were it would be better equipped and probably more expensive.
 
I'm guessing Sky Glass is the first step in the 'future' of TV and steaming packages.

It wouldn't suprise my in a few years both sky and virgin will do a collaboration with LG or Sony and stick the hardware in a top end TV.

I definitely can see end of dishes. You'd just need a little sky TV wi fi box and connect to the TVs wi fi. This would be handy for people who can't have a dish (my mate moved into a gaff that was a listed building and didn't know he couldn't have a dish😂) or those blocks of flats with a poor shared dish.
 
S7DiscoDown said:
I'm guessing Sky Glass is the first step in the 'future' of TV and steaming packages.

It wouldn't suprise my in a few years both sky and virgin will do a collaboration with LG or Sony and stick the hardware in a top end TV.

I definitely can see end of dishes. You'd just need a little sky TV wi fi box and connect to the TVs wi fi. This would be handy for people who can't have a dish (my mate moved into a gaff that was a listed building and didn't know he couldn't have a dish😂) or those blocks of flats with a poor shared dish.
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Freeview is already an app, Netflix and amazon prime have already shown the model works but people will probably want to pay less for an app than getting hardware for their money
 
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