[WillPS]

Sorry, I know this is only quite vaguely related but wanted to share a frustrating experience I've had today with Sky Store as a non-Sky customer.

Fiancée wanted to watch Love Actually, which it seems Sky have some kind of UK exclusivity over this year, so not available on any of the services we have a sub for (Disney+, Netflix, Amazon Prime). No matter, I thought, last year when I was a Sky Broadband customer they 'gave' me a copy to 'keep' on Sky Store.

So I fire up the Apple TV, and discover to my surprise that despite having a very rich and feature complete Now app, there's no Sky Store.

Then I tried Google Play on our TV self and discovered there's no compatible app on there either. Nor is there an app on the Xbox platform. Nor YouView.

No matter, I thought - I'll grab a laptop and cast it from there - first I try Safari and find they don't support it. Then I try Firefox, which they support and hurrah, the film plays. Then I discover that it's only SD because it's a Mac. Oh well, I think, that'll have to do. Then I go to screencast and discover that only HDCP connected devices are supported, so I'd need to physically connect my laptop to my TV which is not impossible but not especially practical with our setup.

Deeply frustrating. Have Sky given up on the notion of this service being useful to non-customers? It feels like the only realistic TV experience is via Roku or LG TV now.

In the end I gave up with it, activated the VPN and streamed from Netflix US, which worked a charm (although it turns out the soundtrack is a little different on their version, who knew?).

It's stuff like this which really put me off buying content digitally. I've bought quite a few Blu Rays this year (mostly 4K but also older HD ones when I find them at charity shops for films which don't yet have a 4K release), and I guess I'll add Love Actually to my list to look out for now.