my week with SKYQ

Sky says its new Q is the future of TV, but is ‘Fluid Viewing’ all it’s cracked up to be? T3 editor Rob Carney gave it the once-over

DAY ONE, WEDNESDAY, INSTALLATION day

Even though I’ve had Sky for years – I’ve been on the top package for a while now – I was excited about getting Sky Q. It promised a lot; a new take on multiroom TV that I was looking forward to. I’d also had a new Loewe Reference 55-inch 4K TV put in the day before (which is stunning), so I had the perfect screen for the occasion.

Installation was, by all standards, very simple. It began with one of the engineers – there were two of them – scoping out my house for a wireless signal. They told me that sometimes it’s hard to get a signal, especially in huge houses where the TVs are a long distance from each other. It’s not a massive issue, as Sky can hardwire it if there are problems, but my house isn’t especially big and my Wi-Fi signal is strong throughout. The Sky Q Hub (which I’d already set up) made it even stronger, and the Sky Q Silver and Mini boxes also act as Wi-Fi boosters.

I opted to put the Sky Q Silver in my lounge and the Sky Q Mini in the master bedroom. My Sky Q Hub is located in the dining room. My AV system downstairs is fairly simple: a Marantz AV receiver with an Xbox One, a PlayStation 4, a Chromecast and now a Sky Q box plugged in via HDMI, with everything going out to the Loewe TV. After plugging in and turning on (and the engineer doing a few more checks on an iPad), everything appeared to be working fine. On set-up, the system asked what TV I had, and immediately worked with the Loewe 55-incher, controlling the volume on the Marantz amplifier. I was a little disappointed that I could no longer turn the amp on and off using the Sky remote, but never mind. What annoyed me more is the fact that I can’t – for the meantime, anyway – use my Logitech Harmony to control the system (although by the time you read this there will probably be a Harmony code for the Q box). It’s not Sky’s fault, I guess (the Sky Q box has Bluetooth, which the touch remote uses as well as IR), but it means I now have to turn everything on and set the right inputs.

Once it was all up and running, the engineers left and I was free to play around. Even though I’d used it before, the touch remote took a bit of getting used to – you have to slide up and down, left and right to navigate, but I kept pressing it in, thus selecting something I didn’t want to. A learning curve for me, then, but overall the system was easy to use. I set the output to 1080p and applied some parental controls – changing the pin via the box, which you previously couldn’t do. I navigated to Sky Sports HQ HD – I like the fact that you can choose Sports from the Home menu and then select On Now – and watched for a bit. Everything was set up fine and to my liking. I also liked the new, slicker OSD when I changed channels manually – and being able to access a mini TV guide by pressing the Touch remote.

DAY TWO, THURSDAY GETTING TO GRIPS WITH IT

I got up early the next day to try out some of Sky Q’s features. On the 32-inch Sony TV in my bedroom, I found BBC Breakfast on BBC One HD – not exactly the kind of content that Sky Q was created for, but hey – and watched for half an hour or so. I like the more basic Q remote that comes with the Mini; OK, it’s not as flash but I prefer the standard nav buttons.

When it was time to get up, I paused it, had a shower, ate my smoked salmon and scrambled eggs followed by freshly

Having the ability to record four shows and watch another is great

squeezed orange juice (prepared by my butler, Henry) and ventured to the lounge to pick up where I left off upstairs.

Where exactly do you find the live stream? Well, it turns out it’s not there. Not in recordings; not in My Q; not anywhere. So how does Fluid Viewing work? The truth is you have to actually record a live show and then pause it to carry on watching it in another room. I went back upstairs and hit record. I then went back downstairs, found the show in My Recordings (located on the Home screen) and carried on watching. This wasn’t exactly how I imagined Fluid Viewing to work – although there’s bound to be an update as Sky Q evolves. At least there’s a workaround, even if it does mean having unwanted recordings on the planner (which I can delete, of course – though there’s plenty of space on the 2TB Silver). Note that the Sky Q Mini doesn’t have a hard drive, so any recordings started on that box will go on the Silver box.

At this point, I couldn’t help feeling a tiny bit misled by the whole Fluid Viewing concept. Sure, it worked on recordings, but I longed for it to work on live TV – without having to record the thing I’m watching. Of course, you can pause and continue on demand shows and box sets in the same way as your recordings (you’ll find them in My Q).

By this time, I had to go to work, so Sky Q was flicked off – just after I scheduled four things to record at once (one of the great features of the Sky Q Silver box). Now I could have Homes Under The Hammer, Jeremy Kyle, The

Wright Stuff and In the Night Garden all waiting for me when I got home.

DAY THREE, FRIDAY

movies on deman d

Joking aside, having the ability to record four shows at once – and watch a fifth live – is great. And upon arriving home from work the previous evening, I did catch up on a few recordings I’d set at once – a programme about Gary Player on Sky Sports 4; highlights of a La Liga football match; and an episode of Impractical Jokers on Comedy Central. Sure, I could probably have got all of these on On Demand, but I wanted to test out Sky Q’s recording ability.

Friday night was film night, so it was time to check out the On Demand content in Sky Movies. Terminator

Genisys did nothing for me, apart from showing me that a) Arnold Schwarzenegger is still a wooden actor, and b) Sky Q’s movie service is very, very good. My broadband connection runs at about 40Mbps – not too bad, but nothing like Virgin’s Vivid service, for instance. But the film was ready in less than a minute, and – for my sins – I watched it all the way through. The picture quality was excellent and the sound brilliant (partly thanks to my surround-sound set-up from Orb Audio, which I got imported from the US a few years ago).

For the sake of testing, I then started another movie – this time, the Australian crime thriller

Son Of A Gun. But I was tired, so after a few minutes I paused it, turned off the system and went upstairs. Booting up my Sony TV, I found the film in My Recordings and carried on watching from where I left off. I awoke the next day to find the box in standby mode and with no idea what Son Of A

Gun was about (I think it had Ewan McGregor in it).

DAY FOUR, SATURDAY

ti me for a cat ch-up

Ah, Saturday. With no work to go to, I could really get my teeth into Sky Q. First on the agenda was to catch up on any recent TV I might’ve missed. So I hit the Home button on the Q touch remote and went to Top Picks – where you land by default. I gambled on DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow, which was ready to play in around 30 seconds. After this mediocrity, I watched some live football (Burnley v Blackburn, if you’re interested). One thing to note at this point is that the new Sky Q Home makes everything easier to find – as well as helping me to discover new shows I might have missed. My Q also started giving me suggestions on what to watch (in the first couple of days, it had said it was still learning what I liked), as well as giving me the shows I’d started watching but not finished.

DAY FIVE, SUNDAY

exploring the sky q app

I like to cook on a Sunday. And usually, I either listen to the radio or watch Sky Go on my iPad Pro while doing so. But now I could join everything up using the Sky Q app. It only works on tablets at the moment; it links into your Sky Q box to give you pretty much all the functionality of a Sky Q Mini on a mobile device, including being able to record shows to your main Sky Q box. As usual, I struggled to get the iPad Pro Smart Cover to make a stand, but after propping it up against a bread bin, I could start watching. I’d recorded a good chunk of the golf from the previous night, so I started watching that – by accessing the recording from the My Recordings section in the app. It’s extremely cool being able to access your recordings on a tablet. And tomorrow morning, I’d test it out on the move.

DAY SIX, MONDAY wat ching on the move

The previous evening, I’d have loved to stay up to watch the World Golf Championship, but I needed to be up early in the morning. So at 10pm, I hit record and switched everything off, dreaming of what I could watch the next day (not really, I dreamed of a giant ice-cream monster).

On Monday morning, I used the Q Sync feature on the Sky Q app to transfer the recording to my iPad, then watched the golf on my commute into work. It worked flawlessly. I imagine this is going to be one of the big pulls of Sky Q – being able to take your recordings wherever you go. It’s certainly a plus for me (although some content, such as BBC iPlayer stuff, won’t work due to licensing issues). Similarly, as with Sky Go, you can watch live TV or on-demand shows, as well as being able to download on-demand TV to your device when you have a Wi-Fi connection. Fluid Viewing was starting to make sense. But wouldn’t it be ace if you could pause something at home and carry on watching on your phone as you left the house?

DAY SEVEN, TUESDAY tying up loose en ds

By this point, Sky Q was a premium TV-viewing service I didn’t want to get rid of. I love the multi-room functionality without the cabling; and I very much like Q Sync. I’d like it more if Fluid Viewing stretched to the live TV tuners, but hey. One thing I haven’t mentioned is 4K, and that’s because, even though the Sky Q Silver box can handle Ultra HD content, there’s no content yet. It’s planned for later this year, though – football being a big draw (although nothing is announced yet). And the other thing is the online video options. At the moment, there’s only YouTube and Vevo, but maybe Netflix and Amazon Prime will feature in the future (unlikely, I’d say). Oh, and there are also a few apps, such as Sky Sports News, that you can access via a button on the remote.

VERDICT pre mium fun for tv buffs

Sky Q is a premium product, and it’ll cost you. For the package I have – with one Silver, one Q Mini, Sky Fibre broadband, phone and every channel, you’re looking at £130 per month on a minimum contract of 18 months. There’s also a one-off fee of £99 for the Sky Q Silver’s smart features (why they cost so much is a mystery; I presume it’s due to added gubbins on the dish antenna), and a Fibre activation fee of £35. So it’s quite an investment, even if it is probably the most premium TVwatching experience you can currently get. There are also all sorts of upgrade options – see ‘The real cost of Sky Q’ on p93.

It may be expensive but it’s brilliant. While it certainly has its quirks, it’s an unrivalled system that takes TV-watching to another level. Seriously, seriously good.