Sky Q first look
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Watch anything, anywhere with multi-device, multi-room TV viewing – Sky is going for it all
Sky Q is Sky’s next-generation TV service. Due to launch later this year, it aims to deliver ‘fluid viewing’, giving you access to Sky TV wherever and however you want it. Combining live and on-demand content, plus your own recordings, and giving you access all around your home and on the move. It doesn’t bring 4K Ultra HD at launch, as widely tipped, though this will follow. Launching with a new range of boxes and a new app, Sky Q isn’t compatible with existing Sky TV services (your Sky dish will need a “slight tweak” but otherwise there are no new cables to install), and is instead being billed as a ‘premium’ addition to the company’s existing video and app offerings.
Three boxes and a broadband hub There are three Sky Q TV boxes, and a new broadband hub. The Sky Q Silver (available in black and silver) and Sky Q (black only) are the two main units, plus the Q Mini (black), aimed at smaller rooms. The Mini piggy-backs off your main box and doesn’t have a tuner or hard drive. All the boxes follow the same slimline design, and look nigh-on identical. The Sky Q Silver is the flagship box. If you want 4K when it arrives on Sky, this is the only Sky Q box that will support it. The other benefits 56 www.whathifi.com
come in the form of extra storage, tuners and connections. A 2TB box, the Q Silver comes with a whopping 12 tuners, and has two HDMI, two USB and one optical audio output. The Q box, meanwhile, has 1TB storage and eight tuners, plus one HDMI, one USB and one optical output. All those extra tuners are in place to deliver Sky’s “fluid viewing” experience. With the 12 tuners you can simultaneously – deep breath – watch TV, get a picture-in-picture preview of a second channel, record four other channels, stream to two Q Mini boxes and to two tablets. The Sky Q box’s eight tuners mean the simultaneous streaming functionality drops to one tablet and one Mini box. There’s also a new Sky Q remote (and a new app and a whole new interface). The remote uses Bluetooth rather than infrared to connect, which means line of sight to your box is no longer an issue. Smaller and lighter, it’s a quite different breed of handset, with the main focus a large touch-sensitive control. In fact, there are no manual buttons for moving up and down the interface – it’s all about the touch. Voice search is said to be in the pipeline, too. While the extra tuners will allow you to simply watch and record more
programmes at the same time, more crucial is the ability to access live, recorded and ondemand content from multiple devices, inside and outside your home. It’s this that really defines Sky Q. Move to your bedroom (and a Q Mini box) or your tablet (and the Sky Q app), and you can
Key features ▼ The all-new remote, which uses Bluetooth rather than infrared, is based around a large, central touch-sensitive control