Sky UK Unveil Broadband Based Stream TV Box Without Satellite
As expected, Sky (Sky Broadband) has today announced the launch of their new standalone ‘Sky Stream‘ product, which uses your home broadband ISP and WiFi connection to stream Sky’s on-demand video content and live TV channels directly to your existing TV set without any satellite dish or installation being required.
Most of Sky’s existing TV services are currently still being delivered via their digital satellite platform. But that began to change last year with their new Sky Glass product, which made it possible to stream their TV channels and content over a broadband connection (here). The catch with Sky Glass is that you were forced to adopt the company’s own custom Sky Glass TV set and that still has a few.. rough edges. It’s also not cheap.
However, earlier this year (here) Sky announced that they were developing a similar standalone (i.e. no dish or Sky Glass display required) TV streaming product, which would be based around their existing Sky Stream pucks (mini set-top-boxes). The pucks are currently only being sold as part of the Sky Glass product and are designed to work with your existing TVs (i.e. adding Sky TV via streaming for a multi-room solution).
By comparison, the new Sky Stream product effectively makes their pucks independent of both their Sky Glass and satellite dish based products (Sky Q, Sky HD etc.), enabling Sky to deliver their TV services as a standalone solution via just a small and simple set-top-box (STB) – over your existing broadband connection.
Sky claims that ‘Stream’ will be the “most affordable way to get Sky TV and Netflix together“, with combined packages starting from £26 a month on an 18-month term (£29 for a 31-day term) – this covers Sky Ultimate TV & the Netflix Basic plan. Customers will also be able to access all the usual Freeview channels, apps (e.g. Apple TV+, Amazon Prime, Disney+, BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All4, YouTube, Discovery+, Peacock, Fiit etc.) and Sky’s own premium channels / on-demand content (e.g. Sky Cinema, Sky Sports, BT Sport etc.).
However, there is a £39.95 set-up fee (or £20 if you take an 18-month contract), but next-day delivery is included as standard and there’s a 1-year warranty. As well as the puck, you’ll also receive Sky’s voice remote (control) device.
Stephen van Rooyen, Sky’s Executive VP & CEO for UK & Europe, said:
“Sky’s always reinvented the TV experience and offered the best content – but it’s not always been accessible to everyone. There couldn’t be a better time to launch our latest innovation using the Sky Glass Platform – whether you want to stream House of the Dragon, Gangs of London or Stranger Things, Sky Stream has it all. It’s the most affordable and easiest way to get Sky TV and Netflix together, offering consumers the value they are seeking right now.”
The operator added that Sky Stream would be “compatible with any broadband provider“, provided your ISP connection can deliver a minimum download speed of 10Mbps (same as the USO level). Sky also added that Sky Stream would be “constantly updated with innovative new features” and that there will also be a Whole Home Pack for an extra £12 a month, which lets you have up to 5 additional Sky Stream devices wherever you’d like in your home.
Sky Stream will be available to buy in the UK from 18th October 2022 on Sky.com. Alternatively, you can buy at a Sky Retail store or hub. Broadly speaking, this looks a lot more like the product that consumers have long hoped to see from Sky and is likely to get a warmer reception than Sky Glass, since many people already have highly capable TVs and don’t want to be forced to use a bespoke model from Sky.
The fact that you won’t need that satellite dish any more is another obvious benefit.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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As a Sky Q customer, I wonder if I can use this to replace my mini box at the same/similar price?
You can’t have Sky Q and Sky Glass at the same time I’m afraid.
I’m a sky customer would this work in my caravan and would I get same channels as my home box and just pay the extra as a multi rm purchase
Such good news I nearly went for a Sky Glass TV last month but went for a LG OLED for the better Image Quality and 120FPS VRR for my PS5 so happy to see that it was the right decision. I will be buying one of these Stream Boxes day one been wanting to have a Sky Package for many years.
The stream box is for those that don’t use Sky Glass, as I understand it from another website on this news .
No they are the same system as Glass but you don’t have to buy the TV to use them as you currently do.
I’m not disputing that. Other news releases state, the stream can now be used by customers who don’t have glass as their contract, from October 2022. Glass customer apparent already could order the stream box.
An interesting first version of thier new product
But it really needs to be app based so it’s available on multiple devices
Also only having 100Mb ethernet like most smart TV devices creates bandwidth bottlenecks so hopefully they will use the new AV1 standard that provides TV broadcast quality 1080p streaming at under 35Mb/sec(4K under 70Mb)
Do you buy these stream boxes and own them or do you loan them?
Sky used to make you buy it (I remember shelling out £270 for a Sky HD box which broke 13 months in and I was told to suck it up and buy another one) but now a days you rent it – which I think is better as I used to have hard drives going wrong and images stuttering the last time I used Sky Q 3 years ago.
Fyi Mark. Satellite fish in the article 😉
I very.. nearly decided not to correct that 🙂 .
Haha
The box must not cost more than a couple of quid, else the 18 month offer of “only” £20 wouldn’t exist.
Dam Skatellite Fish could have been much cooler 🙂
Considering that more and more people are getting decent full fibre internet access it is a nice opportunity to setup a VPN at home and take this box and watch abroad or share costs using multiroom with friends and family 🙂
They’ll have thought of that. Same way Sky Q mini boxes won’t work behind a VPN and talk back to a main box elsewhere.
Matt I am not talking about having third party VPN elsewhere but VPN running on my router at home and then route the traffic from Sky box to my home local network. The only way they could find out it is not physically in the same home would be checking latency which I have an idea how to trick it or built in GPS receiver.
I meant that too. Have a look online. It has been tried and tested and does not work. People have even extended the same subnet over VPN over a private link and it won’t work. As something that relies on an IP network to work, Sky will have examined this to the Nth degree.
I’m intrigued now. How can they tell the traffic is coming from behind a VPN? Except as already mentioned, the latency, or TTL? I use wireguard at home, and it hasn’t had any problem using streaming services that are geoblocked to UK only. But I don’t have sky so I can’t test it.
I have an openwrt router that just VPNs everything. It won’t let any traffic at all pass directly through the WAN links so yeah i’d love to know how they discover that. All the traffic that enters my openwrt router goes out via my wireguard link to home, the home wireguard endpoint would de-encapsulate the traffic and as far as the internet is concerned it’s my wireguard endpoint at home making the connection out to the internet.
I’m actually so intrigued now i might even get it just to break it. But then i’d have to pay the capita lot for a license. Or would I?
Yeah Anon I am going to give it a go, I am pretty sure it relies either on TTL or latency so should be easy to bypass and share with friends/family.
Yes Anon because it’s live TV over the internet – just like any live channels on the catchup apps now.
£40 set up fee? For plugging it in yourself to your own router?
Wut??!!
Ridiculous
That £40 setup fee includes the box itself.
The box must not cost more than a couple of quid, else the 18 month offer of “only” £20 wouldn’t exist.
Sky is not meant for the fiscally responsible.
I would assume calling the fee a “Set Up fee” is some sort of tax dodge as they can argue they are not selling a physical product? Also they can still claim ownership of the hardware and ask for it back?
So will these boxes be owned by the customer, or will they be like Q boxes and merely rented?
Guessing owned since there is only a 1 year warranty. But then again there is a set up fee, not a purchase fee.
Wonder if they’ll do an equivalent of Freesat by Sky for this. My TV coverage is ropey (hiding behind a hill a long way from Crystal Palace) and i’ve never really wanted the physical dish on my house.
Even if they charged a fiver a month for a baseline service, they’d still have an outlet for PPV, chargeable sports events etc.
They should – because what I find annoying is that when you go to Q they put a quad LNB on – but don’t remove it – so FFV Sat does not work after they change to Quad and you have to pay someone to come and put it back to single LNB.
Nice as this is, it’s not a far enough step. They should be developing apps for the existing platforms not rolling out _more_ e-waste to plug into the TV….
Have they not noticed that D+ and Netflix don’t require hardware??! Cmon Sky, get into the 21st century already…..
Don’t they argue that NOWTV is their option for that?
They already are! Sky and by extension Comcast are developing a IP/Smart TV Ecosystem they can scale globally and across different products such as the Xfinity products, the Comcast/Charter JV and getting Glass into new markets like the recent deals with Multichoice and Foxtel.
It isn’t about being an app on someone’s platform – they want to be THE platform, as in the main gateway for surfacing content from multiple providers and be able to monetise that whether by bundling or generating ad revenue from those services they’re hosting… I think the real ‘streaming war’ so to speak is not who has the shiniest and most expensive dragon show, it’s likely going to be who can carve out a meaningful space as the primary UX.
That app has been around for an age. The one on the XBox is superb – full catch-up service, full live service, great picture.
I suspect this will do a little more, but there’s not a lot missing from the xbox one.
I *might* have borrowed my brothers login to watch the F1.
Sky just cannot let go of having a hold over you. That’s why they need the boxes. Sky this year said we couldn’t have TV package as no signal, gosh the freedom of streaming and perfect picture, so things via another box, thanks but no thanks, saved a fortune last couple of months and able to watch tv
@GG so what if you did?
I’ve got a few family members borrowing my login for Sky Go – and have had for 10 yers – 😉
Celebration TV has just come on Freeview and it’s rubbish.
99% of linear TV is rubbish. I am still waiting for the offer where I could order and pay for selected channels only. But this is not going to happen.
Unlike Sky Q it won’t record so not unsimilar to land based TV but better quality
why do you need to record if they keep repeating the same stuff all the time? There are even duplicated +1 channels just to display more ads.
@John recording is very useful if you want to watch 4k content but don’t have the bandwidth to stream it live. I can set my sky q box to download a 4k episode even though my bandwidth isn’t quite good enough to stream it.
These look like they are the same as the ‘pucks’ for a second TV you can get if you have Sky Glass but want multiroom.
From my testing, watching one of Sky’s live sports channels at 1080p on one of these uses around 7.5mbit; seems fairly consistent, so presumably they’re using a constant(ish) bitrate for that. I’ve not got a 4k TV so can’t see what the bitrate is for that.
From my testing, whenever I’ve looked the data has been coming from Akamai CDN IP addresses.
Broadcast is definitely changing and CDN is the only way to go to deliver high quality streams to millions even if you own an isp.
I’d be interested to know the bandwidth numbers compared to an OTT like Netflix.
I wonder when/if they start to use multicast. Likely useless for subscriber based streams but would work well for free to air. Funny how that would be useless for iplayer as that is essentially subscriber based now.
Well done sky.
At first glance this looks broadly similar to Virgin Media’s Stream, although one big difference is that VM’s box must be used with VM’s broadband.
No thanks Sky. I rather use my own freeview tv.
Useless if you already use a Humax box which allows you to set to record Freeview channels and quick access to streaming services like Netflix. Only possible advantage of having Sky is access to CNN but even that is available cheaply online from third parties like Giniko.
CNN international is FTA on satellite. No need to pay for it, I don’t know who would judging from the CNN+ venture.
This is good news. I didn’t want Sky glass even with the 30 days – and I didn’t want a puck thing either – they keep bombarding me with offers but the one I had just today was nothing like this.
Good news at last! I am getting sick of IPTV to be honest as good as it is
This has got to be better than Sky glass
Well it looks like those of us still unable to get full fibre broadband with an optimistic date of 2026 for availability are screwed even with regular TV now. When are they fully transitioning away from the dish based service? This is all and well if you have good broadband. I’m lucky if I get 15MB download speeds at times.
15MB is good try 18kbps my friend has talktalk adsl and that is all the speed he is getting I’ve told him to ring and tell them to stick it where the sun don’t shine how on earth are you supposed to do anything with that kind of speed in this day in age my dial up is as faster than that back in the 90s
I thought this service already existed and is called NowTV. How’s it going to be different apart from more expensive Sky branding?
Now TV and bt have done this for years
The big thing here is the bb speed .Sky always blame the bb speed if it not work.As said before both bt and virgin only sell it with their bb to try to control this problem.As said before now TV is far better and no contract .
Agreed but NowTV is a watered down, very restricted version – if this is the FULL Sky experience all singing and dancing then it’s probably going to KILL NowTV.
Great if TV via the internet is becoming a thing in GB.
BT started recently, but requires BT broadband. Sky’s monthly prices by the looks of it seem rather high though for what you’re getting.
If you factor in the “multi room” cost, it would become considerable. I would have thought it would become interesting at around half the stated price.
E.g. BT (which requires BT broadband) is £17 a month. (Or £6 a month on offer.) £10 for a second box. On a contract. Even that is rather high, especially given you can only do it with BT’s internet product and CPI increases.
If Sky priced their product at £10 a month on 12 months contract, or £12.50 on a rolling basis, then it would be intriguing. Maybe £5 extra a month for Multi Room. I am guessing they’re still going for Rented boxes?
Maybe an additional £30 for Adds ons like Sports.
Charging £29 a month (rolling) plus a further £12 for multi room seems way too high. £41 a month just for Freeview basically. Yes it’s via the Internet. But still. And a £40 “set up fee” that you pay to plug it in yourself?!
you own the boxes with sky stream, they aren’t rented like Q
@joshe
Even with owning the boxes, if the price for Sky Stream was at least half of what they are quoting now, it would likely garner a lot more interest.
These aren’t boxes with local recording. So it’s purely about streaming Freeview TV via the internet and the potential to add and subtract 4K Sky content (Sports, Cinema, Documentaries etc) at will now and again.
Sky Stream for £10 a month and £5 extra for the Multi room component (ie. £15 in total) and it might take off.
So what is different from NOW TV? Just more channels?
From what I can tell it’s all the channels and services minus recording.
From what I’ve heard on a radio add, it’ll be your entry to all OTT services line Prime vid/Paramount+/Disney+ etc etc.
So you could look for Thor and it’ll show you all platforms it’s available from including freeview and streaming apps.
I think it’s their usp.
Appletv (the device) does very similar, it’ll check all streaming services for the program you want and send you there if you want.
If sky add a decent net based dvr (or equivalent) then they could corner the market.
@Chris
I would concur with that. IF Sky were to offer TV via the Internet without the necessity to have Broadband with them, without excessive contracts, with fixed prices, with a rolling option, with some form of Cloud based recording and Pause/Play facility for Live TV, with HD and 4K television content, then they could go places.
The currently advertised prices though seem way too high for what effectively amounts to Freeview via the Internet. If they were about 40% of that, then maybe it would take off.
@JamesBand
And of course you’ll want all that from Sky for next to nowt.