Sky is banking on its new set-top box to help stem customer churn. Senior business journalist Tom Pullar-Strecker put it to the test.
REVIEW: Sky TV had a request before they sent over the latest Sky Box for a review.
They wanted to know if I had a central media hub, surround sound, “multiroom”, or anything else that might complicate setting up the device. Um. “No, no and no.”
I’ve never really been a gadget person.
The first thing that comes to my mind when thinking about upgrading my set-top box is that I will lose everything I have already recorded in my Planner.
READ MORE:
* Vodafone TV switch-off pushed back again as Sky TV 'fine tunes' its new box
* First customers get hands on new Sky TV box
* Sky TV bumps up price of Sky Sport
And hooray for that, quite frankly. I find the idea of starting anew from a blank hard disc drive cathartic.
Face it, your Sky box is stuffed full of worthy documentaries that you are never going to watch, ridiculous sci-fi films your wife sensibly refuses to let you put on and 2000 repeats of Would I Lie To You?, only one or two of which you may not have already seen.
OK, maybe that’s just me then.
Encouragingly the box was pretty easy to set up and install.
Tom Pullar-Strecker/Stuff
Sky has yet to announce the date when the box will go on sale to subscribers, priced at $200, but its release is believed to be imminent.
Though if sod’s law dictates you are in a confined space with your head stuck in a piece of antique furniture trying to plug short cables into the back of the box blind, the biggest bugbear may be the satellite cable input wasn’t designed to be pulled in and out routinely and can be awkward to screw and unscrew.
Another reviewer said set-up took them 10 minutes. Let's agree I did it in 9 minutes and 45 seconds.
As far as I could tell from a couple of hours’ testing, the box appeared free of bugs, and the response times scrolling through channels and programmes on Sky’s EPG with a direct Ethernet connection to my wi-fi router were acceptable, if not zippy.
Sky says they should improve with future updates.
The immediate attraction of the new box is that it doubles as both a satellite recorder and an Android media player, that can be used to access services such as Netflix, Neon, TVNZ+, Amazon Prime Video, Sky's normal on-demand content and other apps available through the Google Play store.
Toggling to Netflix is just a matter of pressing a button labelled “Netflix” on the remote, and there are several buttons to toggle back to different screens on Sky.
My very first impression was that the box was easier to use as a device to watch Netflix than as a device to watch Sky.
But on reflection that’s probably just because there is no change to the way you’d use Netflix on the Sky Box versus on any other media player, whereas the way you access Sky content may take some getting used to.
The new box supports the ultra-high definition 4K standard in which Netflix and Amazon stream some programmes, but which Sky doesn’t yet, so “advantage Netflix” there, perhaps.
The feature on the Sky Box that I had been most keen to try out, voice control, proved a bit hit-and-miss.
Tom Pullar-Strecker/Stuff
Sky lets subscribers browse its programmes and channels as “tiles”, Netflix-style.
To issue a voice command, you first need to press a button on the remote to get it into listening mode.
That means there is no real point in using spoken commands to pause, mute, or rewind a programme or to turn the volume up or down.
If you have to hunt down the remote, dig it out of a crevice in the couch and press a button before giving a voice command, it is easier to just stick with pushing the buttons for those basic tasks.
Voice commands can be a handy time-saver if you want to call up a specific programme or type of programming without having to scroll through screeds of tiles on the screen, though.
Speak the command “Find Borgen” while you are watching Sky, for example, and the box will automatically load up the popular Netflix political drama.
But, as yet, the voice function, Google Assistant, appears to have no ability to search or find channels on Sky’s satellite catalogue, so tell it to turn on Sky Sport 1 and it won’t know what you are on about.
Sky says voice commands will work for “certain third-party apps content” and can be used to search for “some” Sky shows and movies.
“We are fine-tuning with Google and this will improve over time.” Voice navigation on Sky channels is “on road map”, it also says.
There are several ways to browse through and call up Sky’s programming, though – perhaps almost too many.
A “Home” screen, provides a Netflix-like view of Sky’s programming line-up and channels, with shows and channels displayed as tiles and shows classed into categories such as new releases, popular programmes, trending programmes, top movies and so on.
Tom Pullar-Strecker/Stuff
The Sky Box retains a traditional TV guide, though the font size is fairly small.
It is here that Sky will also recommend programmes to watch based on your previous viewing, once that feature is added.
Home doesn’t automatically filter out programmes that are on channels that the customer has not subscribed to, so could prove a frustrating experience for those on more basic entertainment plans.
There is also a “Browse” screen that can be set to only list programmes you can watch, and that be can filtered by content type, such as “comedy” and “sci-fi”.
It can also be set to show only programmes that are available to be streamed right way, or both streamed content and upcoming satellite TV content, in the latter case so they can be set-up to record.
I found Browse the easiest the way to peruse programmes, so was a bit surprised there wasn’t a shortcut on the remote to go straight to it.
The third main path to Sky programmes (there is also a “Watch TV” and a “MyHub” screen) is a “TV Guide” that works much like the programming guide on Sky’s existing satellite boxes.
Subscribers can click up and down through Sky channels and forward and back in time to see what’s on later and set up programmes to be recorded, as they can with the current guide.
But be warned, the font size on the TV Guide is very small, despite it – I think – showing less information per page than Sky’s existing EPG.
Sky says it “hasn’t had one comment” from triallists about the font size, but I sense a possible ambush.
The last time Sky messed with the font on its on-screen TV guide in 2015, it triggered a huge revolt from the more visually-challenged, which culminated in a re-think and an apology from then chief executive John Fellet.
Supplied
Time will tell whether Sky TV CEO Sophie Moloney finds herself in a similar spot to one of her predecessors.
Time will tell if history repeats.
I wonder if Sky should have merged Home and Browse into a single screen, retained the original look and feel of the TV Guide for a while so no-one felt they were “losing” anything, and included a large button on the remote labelled “Sport".
Sky advises it has a design for the former change that it will “prioritise based on customer feedback”.
I don't think I’ll be distraught to hand back the box now my trial is over and return to my previous combination of a MySky box and a separate media player, but maybe I’ve just got a case of “tile fatigue”.
Overall, the new box is a technological advance that Sky probably had to embrace and that I expect will quite quickly grow on subscribers, both as they get used to it and as additional services and further refinements are deployed.
Sky has yet to announce the date when the box will go on sale to subscribers, priced at $200, but its release is believed to be imminent.
It will require a satellite dish as well as a broadband connection. Any streaming apps such as Netflix, Prime Video and Neon need to be paid for separately.
"gadget" - Google News
February 20, 2023 at 11:00PM
https://ift.tt/PopDhX3
The new Sky Box: A non-gadget guy's take on whether it's any good - Stuff
"gadget" - Google News
https://ift.tt/0fmCrYq
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "The new Sky Box: A non-gadget guy's take on whether it's any good - Stuff"
Post a Comment