[Rdd]

Stream isn't quite there yet, I agree with you there, but it certainly has the potential. The recording issue that current Sky Q users seem to be the most concerned about isn't a major issue for me personally.

What is interesting however is that the website doesn't seen to let you buy Q online. I'm sure you can call CS and still get an installation, but the direction is towards Stream first, Glass 2nd.

This is effectively the problem with “migrating” customers from Sky Q to Stream. From the customer perspective there’s no incentive to doing so and actually disincentives. You are not gaining anything and you are losing features. Recording is the most prominent, but there’s also the Manual Tuning feature which is important to some users (perhaps gets more use in ROI than the UK).

This cant be likened to DSO where customers were getting access to new features and extra content as incentives to switch. I think Sky would get significant customer backlash now if they announced they were leaving Astra in the morning (and I suspect that day is still years away). What I think they’ll have to do is offer significant customer discounts on price for moving to Stream, and make such discounts not available to Q users. Because if Stream can’t compete on features or content, it will have to compete on price.

[WillPS]

This is effectively the problem with “migrating” customers from Sky Q to Stream. From the customer perspective there’s no incentive to doing so and actually disincentives. You are not gaining anything and you are losing features. Recording is the most prominent, but there’s also the Manual Tuning feature which is important to some users (perhaps gets more use in ROI than the UK).

This cant be likened to DSO where customers were getting access to new features and extra content as incentives to switch. I think Sky would get significant customer backlash now if they announced they were leaving Astra in the morning (and I suspect that day is still years away). What I think they’ll have to do is offer significant customer discounts on price for moving to Stream, and make such discounts not available to Q users. Because if Stream can’t compete on features or content, it will have to compete on price.

Yeah that's possibly a way they could go - announce price rises but then freeze prices for Sky Stream. Also offer bigger discounts via retentions etc for switching to Stream.

[cable]

Yes, Sky Stream isn’t a like-for-like upgrade in every respect in the way you’d want it to be for Sky Q customers in order to drive demand-led upgrades.

Really, they need a recording-capable version of Sky Stream (although they may be trying to avoid introducing this so they can charge for the Ad-skipping add-on and force people to use players instead).

Personally, I think a total lack of recording is a major drawback for many which would actually be enough of a detractor to stop any consideration of an upgrade. I do think they will eventually have to introduce a “Sky Stream+” with recording, before Sky Q is completed phased out.

The ad skip add on also allows fast forwarding (but not entirely removing) commercials on ITVX/Channel 4/My5 (without the need to have subscribed to the paid tier of the streaming service) so not just for pause and rewind functions of live channels.

I guess the licensing of content means that it no longer makes sense to allow the user to store it to a hard drive. Also, not many people want large boxes where the bulk is mainly the hard drive and the provider would benefit in support costs due to mechanical parts used, SSDs have never been used so I guess they are not cost effective. Even Freeview PVRs have declined in popularity, so those that have got used to apps probably wont miss the recording function much anyway.

[Neil Jones]

I guess the licensing of content means that it no longer makes sense to allow the user to store it to a hard drive. Also, not many people want large boxes where the bulk is mainly the hard drive and the provider would benefit in support costs due to mechanical parts used, SSDs have never been used so I guess they are not cost effective. Even Freeview PVRs have declined in popularity, so those that have got used to apps probably wont miss the recording function much anyway.

You can shove SSDs into Sky+HD boxes, and they will work. They're not optimised for them but they'll work. The supported boxes will take up to 2Tb drives.

I presume in theory you could shove SSDs in other hard drive based PVRs if you really wanted to.

SSDs have come too late really for use in modern PVRs as standard, a 64Gb SSD when the technology first became mainstream and a decent size about a decade ago was something like £90 (I know because I bought one for my computer of the time), Now you can get 2Tb SDDs for not much more than that, though you have to factor in an adaptor as the original drives in Sky+HD are 3.5", whereas SSDs are 2.5".

[Jsnbts]

Does Sky Stream provide Sky with more possibilities in what can be delivered, in a much quicker and more seamless way? For example - if they wanted to introduce a more traditional recording capability to Stream/Glass, could they not just update the software and provide cloud storage, with shows recorded remotely directly to the cloud? They could even offer different tiers of storage to purchase, like Apple does with iCloud.

I'm sure I've made that way too simplistic, but the Sky Stream box just acts as a physical gateway to the software now, doesn't it? I presume the boxes would be updated over time with faster processors and things, but the real wizardry surely sits with the software and online capabilities that can be added to over time.

I have to say my biggest concern with moving to Sky Stream was the lack of traditional recording but after having had it for a good few months now I've realised that apart from a slightly different change in mindset (using playlists etc.), it's almost the same experience as Sky Q, and an excellent product overall.

[Neil Jones]

As Glass is just a TV, you can already view an external drive content on it (USB), I believe so it wouldn't take much to allow it to record to a drive.

Stream though I believe doesn't have any connectivity options at all for external hardware. It has a network port so I suppose in theory it could be upgraded to play stuff off a network drive but otherwise... its pretty much a one job box.

[Rdd]

This article shows some of the issues that are arising in Ireland over the loss of recording and why people don’t get the same experience. I have to say the mention of Doctor Who is an odd one though because it’s widely known that when the BBC did the deal with Disney+ it explicitly kept the steaming rights in ROI so I’m not sure what the issue is there:

www.corkbeo.ie 

Growing numbers of Irish TV viewers 'blocked' from recording BBC, C4 and their f…
Strictly, GBBO, Dr Who, The Traitors and many of the biggest shows on TV are off…
  Source: www.corkbeo.ie

It is however worth noting that the longest established of the linear streaming (ie cable-like) platforms in Ireland, eir TV, has managed to resolve virtually all its issues with recording, including on the BBC, so maybe it’s just a matter of time (it had several years of a head start though, it’s been around since 2019).

The more general point though is that lack of recording is a real issue for people, and it can’t just be dismissed lightly, people are accustomed to a particular experience. Now TV to an extent gets away because it’s a budget platform at a budget price and doesn’t pretend to offer the full cable TV experience - it doesn’t offer terrestrial channels - but if you are promising a full cable TV experience and charging a price accordingly then people will get annoyed if you can’t deliver it.

[Kunst]

Wow, that just seems so poorly planned and Sky and many others

[interestednovice]

I agree with criticism over the lack of recording.

As others have speculated, it was probably at least partly because making small & relatively cheap boxes available was part of the brief, so they only contain a small amount of flash storage and not a full-sized SSD, but it is what viewers expect and is a glaring omission.

Other, more niche, features that are not available on Stream/Glass, such as Manual Tuning, would probably be much less of an issue for most (and they would therefore be able to get away with not having them) but recording is a dealbreaker for too many, in my view.

Sky Stream seems heavily designed around the ability to add the STB seamlessly to a wall-mounted TV, concealing it in the void behind the TV, as the remote works over Bluetooth and the box itself is very small. Additionally, they seemed keen to make sure the box (including packaging) could be posted through a standard letterbox. So maybe these design limitations meant a proper SSD didn’t fit.

But I really think assuming that catch-up will fill the void is a miscalculation on Sky’s part, and they will eventually have to bring recording in.

Cloud recording could work, but broadcasters may not like it and I do wonder if they might insist on restricting the ability to fast-forward adverts in the same way they do for VoD content without the ad-skip addon.

It would also require Sky to make considerable server space available for all the recorded files, but this could be shared across the userbase (so a recording of a given programme would only need to be saved on their servers once, and different subscribers who had opted to “record” it would be served up the same file).

[Transmission]

I've had Sky Stream for a few months now and I can only think of one occasion where I've missed the ability to record - I think it might've been an episode of Taskmaster perhaps where for some reason 'restart programme' wasn't working and the episode hadn't gone up on the Channel 4 app yet either.

Obviously incredibly frustrating when something like that does happen but it's very rare. Most of the time it's very easy and quick to find the stuff we want to watch.