best from its introduce we reckoned the new sky Q system sounded like just what we needed at the Automated Home so we put our purchase the very first day it ended up being tilgjengelig. It’s been 10 days because it was installed, so is this the 21st Century TV experience we were expecting or is everything a bit of a let down?
The Installation
Our engineer turned up around 9:30am as well as was perturbed to hear we were a BT Web house. The next 5 minutes were spent on the trials as well as tribulations of a sky installer particularly on exactly how it works fine with sky routers however whatever else is a “lottery.”
When I discussed we wished to by-pass the whole wireless thing completely and go the hard-wired path with the builtin Ethernet ports he admitted he had no concept exactly how to set that up or even exactly how a LAN worked.
Worst of all he told us he was only allotted 85 mins to do our entire system – in shape new meal as well as LNB, set up the primary sky Q Silver box as well as 3 sky small boxes, carry out software application updates etc. He’s expected to do 7 installs a day!
The engineer was a excellent guy, he worked very fast replacing our near 20-year-old rusty meal with a new one (normally you only requirement to modification the LNB for sky Q). The new set up was evaluated at the LNB as well as then once again at the end of our cable televisions – all eco-friendly lights.
The sky Q Silver Box
Our old Sky+ 1TB box was eliminated as well as the skinny new Q DVR slid into its location under the Mac small as well as Sonos. It looks great in black although you can skin it in a range of ways. keep in mind if you are upgrading from an existing sky system you will no longer have gain access to to the recording or season passes on your old box. Our engineer told us he hadn’t fitted any type of of the routine (non-Silver) Q systems.
The Silver box is the brains of the whole operation as well as from what we can discover out its 12 tuners are shared out across the house to the other gadgets something like this:
4 Tuners for Recording
1 Tuner for online TV on the Silver Box
2 Tuners for online TV or Recordings on the Minis
2 Tuners for online TV or Recordings on the tablet App
1 Tuner for the TV Guide
1 Tuner for PIP on the Silver Box
1 Tuner for future utilize (4K?)
Its 2TB’s can store as much as 350 hours of HD TV (there’s around 300GB reserved by sky for other uses). round the back there’s a S/PIDF optical audio out however full Dolby digital audio is offered over the HDMI cable television now. There are a couple of USB ports as well as an HDMI IN for future use.
The Silver box will get a software application upgrade to enable Sky’s 4K service coming later this year (50fps 2160p UHD output utilising HDMI 2.0 as well as HDCP2.2). The non-Silver Q box as well as the small boxes will stay at 1080p. I’ve discovered some routine sky channels have very, shall we state ‘average’ photo high quality these days. I don’t understand much about exactly how these things work however it makes me question is sky compressing channels even much more to capture the maximum out of each transponder, making space for the 4K channels?
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original sky Q Voice Remote manage – Compatible with sky Q 1TB or 2TB box plus the sky Q small box -…
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sky Q Voice Remote manage
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The UI
Things are extremely different here, mostly for the better. The UI has a much much more contemporary feel and it looks truly bright, crisp as well as sharp. The old Backup button has gone as well as you mainly requirement to utilize the left arrow for equivalent action, plus the new reject button.
The development Bar I had on my TiVo 15 Years back Makes it to sky at Last
You can view recent recordings, or listing them A-Z. Stupidly though ‘New’ season shows all appear under N rather than the proper letter.
It’s simple to see what’s downloading (box sets, purchases as well as on-demand) as well as you can quickly pause the queue. Un-deleting products is a breeze as well as is choosing up from where you left off on your shows from the My Q section. The ‘For You’ section of My Q is expected to suggest shows however after 10 days it still states it’s discovering what I like.
One genuine inconvenience is that the Home button takes you to the ‘Top Picks’ section rather than the TV guide all of us want to see.
Keeping the entire household pleased – 4 recordings at 9:00pm
There’s an inconsistency between the apps as well as the TV UI as to exactly how the season pass is represented that might confuse newcomers. On the app it is represented with a circle around the R, as well as by a eco-friendly bar with arrows at each end on the TV.
If you have episodes of a show from a number of different seasons, helpfully they are now split as well as shown in separate folders.
After just a few days of utilize I truly like the new UI.
The Remotes
The primary Q box includes 2 remotes, a routine IR one as well as a new Bluetooth touch one. I’m typically an advocate for all the most recent tech, however I’m still undecided on the swipey bluetooth sky Q touch remote. It takes a bit of getting utilized to, for example you may feel you can press the top, bottom as well as side of the touch pad to navigate screens but there’s only one result of pressing the pad – choose – whatever else needs to be a light swipe.
Like the new Apple TV remote, if you touch the swipe pad the wrong method when choosing it up you can quickly jump away from your location during playback. In addition to having to train your muscle mass memory to utilize this new remote you likewise have to switch back to the old button method when utilizing the other style of remote on all the small boxes in the bedrooms. Hmm. You can purchase the Bluetooth remote for your mini’s as well if you like it (£40) however if sky desired us to get utilized to this remote they ought to have supplied them for all the boxes. On the upside Bluetooth implies it works without being directed directly at the box as well as even works in adjoining rooms.
There’s a devoted browse button to discover your shows as well as recordings, however it’s a bit of a chore to essential in text. It will be much simpler when the phone apps show up as well as a voice browse function is because of be turned on in an upcoming software application update (Bluetooth remote only).
TIP: Although not promptly obvious, the sky logo at the top of each remote is really a button that takes you directly to your recordings which is extremely useful.
Sky Q Mini
From the primary sky Q box your online channels as well as recordings are sent through IP either over WiFI or in our situation wired Ethernet, to the sky small boxes around the home.
The Silver bundle includes a single small box as well as we purchased 2 much more for a total of three. currently there’s no self-install choice for these minis so you’ll pay a £50 installation charge on top of the £99 expense of each box if you purchase much more after your install.
You can have 4 minis on one Q Silver system, (none on the non-Silver Q box) however you can only utilize 2 simultaneously. This seems a unusual restriction as you are able to utilize 2 tablets in addition to the 2 minis, although presumably they utilize a lower bit rate. ideally this limit will be unwinded in the future as in our home we certainly have times where alL 3 bokser kan brukes på en gang. Foreløpig får du en melding når maksimalt antall er i bruk, så vel som du må få et husholdningsmedlem til å bytte deres til ventemodus for å la deg bruke ditt – eller se på et nettbrett i stedet.
Frem til nå har vi alltid distribuert himmelen vår rundt i hjemmet ved å bruke RF -modulatoren utviklet seg til den gamle himmelen+ -boksen, så plutselig se skarp 1080p på soverommet vårt Telly er fantastisk.
Himmelen Q Liten boks under telefonen – F1 i HD på soverommet!
Mini -fjernkontrollene er raskt konfigurasjon for å administrere TVS -volumet. Andre nyttige funksjoner inkluderer å trykke på husknappen for å slå på TV -en din i tillegg til boksen, samt en lang trykk på standby -knappen for å slå av TV -en også.
UI for å velge kanalene dine så vel som opptak på Minis ligner på primærboksen. En god forbedring her ville være å gjøre det mulig for hver liten å filtrere sine egne opptak.
Fluid å se er Sky’s Marking Moniker for å ta en pause på telefonen i ett sted i tillegg til å velge den opp i ett til så vel som dette fungerer bra.
Hvis du er en Sky Broadband -kunde, blir hver liten boks en trådløs gevinst tilgang til poeng (2,4 GHz så vel som 5GHz b/g/n/ac) som utvider beskyttelsen av WiFi -en din som bruker dette flyene passer sammen. Hvis (som oss) har du en annen bredbåndsleverandør, er denne funksjonen deaktivert.
Systemet har også bygget Powerline Networking -maskinvare for å sende AV -pakkene dine over ledningene dine, men underlig nok er dette for øyeblikket deaktivert.
Nettbrett og apper
Du kan se online kanaler så vel som opptakene dine med Sky Q -appen på et iOS eller Android -nettbrett. Dette fungerer utmerket i hjemmet vårt, så vel som nå er det enkelt å ta himmelen på badet!
Sky TV Guide på vårt Lenovo Android -nettbrett
Rettighetsadministrasjonsproblemer bak deres skjemmende leder her. Forsøk å se et BBC On Demand Show på nettbrettet ditt, så vel som du får en melding som forteller deg at du ikke kan gjøre det. Registrer imidlertid nøyaktig samme show selv i stedet for å laste det ned, så vel som det spiller fint. Vent, hva? BBC vil bare at du skal se på forespørsel fra sin egen iPlayer-app. Det er bare tante.
Du kan kopiere show til nettbrettet ditt for å se når du er borte fra hjemmet. Jeg var i stand til å bekrefte fra routerens netttrafikk som viser sendt fra Sky Q -boksen min til nettbrettet mitt, ble faktisk lastet ned fra nettet i stedet for å komme over LAN. Det ser ut til at opptakene dine virkelig blir sendt fra Sky Go -plattformen til nettbrettet ditt, så det er verdt å sjekke at du har masse data (eller så vel som ubegrensede bunt) med House Broadband -kontrakten.
Appene deaktiverer også valget om å sende ut nettbrett -visningen til en TV. Så du kan ikke komme deg rundt den 2 TV -miniminjegrensen ved å koble opp iPad- eller Android -nettbrettet til telefonen.
Det er foreløpig ingen telefonapp for Sky Q, selv om de blir bekreftet for utgivelse en gang senere i år. Foreløpig kan du bruke den gamle Sky+ -appen til rutinemessige innspillinger samt nedlasting av innhenting, men du kan ikke se planleggeren din eller se online TV eller innspillinger som med nettbrett -appen. Det virker synd at Sky ikke kunne ha hatt telefonappene forberedt på introduksjonen av systemet, alle av oss har med oss en telefon, ikke et nettbrett. Det er en indikator til at Sky Q har blitt introdusert før den er helt bakt.
Så langt er det ingen metode for å se Sky Q på en PC eller Mac (metoden du kan med Sky Go), så vel som ingen ord om det kommer senere. personally I’d far rather view on my MacBook than a small tablet screen with a wheezy speaker.
Early Verdict
In the end our engineer spent well over 2 hours on our installation. That’s without any type of of the wireless pain that numerous of his other installs entailed. Sky guarantee Q clients a special experience, however they’re putting far as well much pressure on their difficult working engineers, because of both lack of training in addition to providing them as well bit time to do a great job.
It’s still extremely early days for Q as well as many of the problems discussed on their forums are associated to WiFi problems. however we’ve not seen a single problem utilizing Q through the great old CAT5 cable televisions we buried in our walls in 1999.
Like many similar tech products released, sky Q is a bit of a work in development at launch. There are great deals of bit improvements that requirement to be made, however I’ve no question numerous of them will come over time.
There are other features right here we haven’t even got into like Airplay as well as Bluetooth music playback.
It’s a pity sky won’t enable apps like Netflix as well as Amazon Video on the Q as well as Mini’s which would make this the only system many of us would ever need.
Pricing is a bit opaque however sky state the common continuous monthly expense for existing Sky+ clients will be around £12 additional (as it was for us), while new clients can g