Sky to Launch 4K Smart Camera for Broadband-based Glass TV UPDATE
Customers of Sky UK’s standalone Sky Glass TV product, which uses your broadband ISP and WiFi connection to stream their on-demand video content and live TV channels directly to Sky’s own brand TV sets (without a satellite dish), may like to know that they will today (or tomorrow) be launching Sky Live – a dedicated smart camera add-on.
Sky first announced the existence of such a camera solution back in 2021, at the launch of Sky Glass, when they highlighted their plans to launch a “high spec 4K smart camera that works seamlessly with Sky Glass” at some point in 2022. But it didn’t launch in 2022, and instead we’ve had to wait until mid-2023 for Sky Live to arrive.
At the time of writing, we don’t have a lot of information on Sky’s new interactive camera, which is designed exclusively for use with Sky Glass. But we do know that it’ll sport all the usual features, such as video calling – supported by noise-cancelling technology to improve audio clarity and group watching (i.e. syncing the show you’re watching with friends/family in another location, while still allowing video chats).
The device will also feature movement sensors to help support video gaming and exercise, which reminds us of Microsoft’s old Xbox Kinect camera. We hope to have more details and prices once the product is fully unveiled, which is expected to occur at the start of this week (a preview event is taking place this morning).
UPDATE 22nd June 2023
The Sky Live camera has today been released (details here).
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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If it’s over £100 and only works to talk to other Sky Glass customers then expect this to be discontinued before the year is out, perhaps with an interim period of being given away free to Glass customers to try and get people interested in the product. I can’t imagine anybody wants to use gestures to unreliably scan their way through TV channels.
Well, only six weeks ago press reports were that sales of Glass were underwhelming, and hinting at cost (and therefore profitability) challenges. Given that the main appeal of Glass is as a single box solution, selling an add on camera dilutes that proposition, adds technical complexity and future support costs – and they either give it away and lose more money, or ask people to pay for it and find that only a modest proportion want to pony up yet more cash.
We have Stream and it’s underWhelming at best. I mean it’s OK but expensive considering NowTv are doing Movies and Kids and Entertainment for £12 a month for 6 months. The only good thing I can say about Stream for us is we took the 30 day option.
I can’t honestly see this working out as a long term product.
I know Meta made some camera too (might be called ‘portal’ but who cares) & I don’t know anybody that either bought one or even bothers to mention it’s existence. Unironically the only place where I have seen them is on the TV – being advertised.
Mind you, that Metaverse project likely had an impact on it’s relevance with people talking about that instead of the camera.
But still it only begs the question as to who out their is willing to spend that sort of money on a proprietary camera for a proprietary television
related to that, Lenovo launched a few years ago a dedicated desktop display/camera for Teams/Zoom (different versions for each!), for commercial use. Called Thinksmart View (since discontinued I think). I have a second hand one (Teams flavour), works OK but isn’t getting latest Teams features (despite being Android under the cover): no backgrounds (not even blur), no effects, no custom emoji.
Part of a wider range of commercial in-room devices (still on sale).
Having a camera would allow the Sky glass hardware to be pivoted to commercial use as an inexpensive in room display, but would need a different software that could be locked down and remotely configured.
We’ve had Sky Glass since week 1 but I’m yet to find any other family or friends who have purchased it. The biggest issue is just lack of people to call.
Surely nobody would be dim enough to launch a video call setup that limits you to other Sky customers?
@anonymous I
Guess we’ll see.
Glass TV is already bulky enough (checked it out in a Sky retail store at launch & was not impressed with the physical size or the image quality). The last thing it needs is additional heft (it certainly does not like the camera is going to be discreet)
The only new hardware I would like to see from Sky is a premium version of the Sky Stream puck (with better processor/memory, something approaching the spec of the latest Apple TV). I would be willing to pay a premium for such a device. Sadly, I don’t hold out too much hope of seeing a premium version of the Stream puck anytime soon.
Sky currently have billboards with an image of an exploding dish and an caption of ‘Goodbye Dish’…if I could get my hands on a premium spec puck , I would be actually willing to say ‘Goodbye Dish’ right now
Imagine thinking that having a camera and even more microphones in your home supplied by Sky/Comcast is a good idea?
For me, Apple are heading in the right direction on this with their upcoming FaceTime on Apple TV. Just use another device that you already own and only when you really need it, wirelessly.
A network engineer i know bought a book called ‘Google hacking’ and other books which show how to view thumbnail videos of peoples home tv cameras. He told me they are extremely unsecure, and you could easily browse through different cameras and then pick the one you want to watch via software. That was years ago so hopefully things are more secure now, but no thankyou not for me.
Anyone allowing a camera like this in their home is insane, not in a million years
I would not have a camera permanently connected indoors that links to the cloud ,I have some outside, but that is a different thing.
They should be working on improving Glass/Stream, not hardware add ons. The core product isn’t even rounded off yet.
It still lacks basic functionality like being able to remove shows from your continue watching list, filtering options for your watchlist are pretty poor too. The TV guide can be sluggish to load and general performance across all apps is pretty underwhelming in terms of speed. If you set the audio out on Stream to DD+ (Why wouldn’t you, everything is DD+) then you lose Atmos. If you leave it to auto, you lose 2s of audio every time you change channel, as Stream works out if it should send PCM or multi channel PCM. On demand doesn’t offer UHD/HDR by default if you subscribe, you have to select it. If by accident you select HD, you can’t watch the episode in UHD unless you fast forward to the end. If you watch an episode in UHD it sometimes loads the next one in HD.
So many little things that need fixing.
Maybe this will prompt competing streaming platforms to add cameras (e.g. Roku).
And for security, all such in-home devices should have hardware video/audio disablement switches.
Basically personal Gogglebox.
Landing page for it here: https://www.sky.com/glass/smart-camera. Not a lot more info though.
I cannot see the market for “watch TV with other people on a video chat” being one that exists outside the heads of people marketing this stuff.
I’d agree, but marketing departments often have only the most tenuous of grasps on real life. Evidently they think a good chunk of their customers want to live in their own version of Gogglebox.
Closed system = DOA
feels like sky keep ripping off things MS did and failed but a lot of sky customers are sheep which is why they continue to pay the silly prices.
They could save themselves a lot of bother by just releasing a sky stream app for the apple tv that can also stream from sky Q.
The promise of stream/glass to blend all content from all streaming services is great but it seems a bit silly to not run on Apple TV.
I’m sure stream is a quality appliance but so is atv.
Yeah, I can’t think of a single good reason why I need a camera hooked up to my TV.
Iam looking forward to the carmea yes
Its out!