Sky Stream is available to buy today in the UK, with prices starting from £26 per month (Image: SKY)
If you want to be one of the first to get Sky Stream, you can order the all-new box today. With next-day delivery (and no satellite dish installation needed), you could be watching hundreds of Sky TV channels, must-binge boxsets HBO, Sky Sports and Sky Cinema in 4K Ultra HD on your new box tomorrow evening. Oh, and it’s cheaper than Sky Glass too – making this one of the best Sky deals available right now. We’ve got all of the details below.
Sky Stream is a small set-top box that, as the name heavily implies, streams live television channels, on-demand boxsets, sports, and movies to your telly. That’s a completely different approach to Sky Q, which follows in the footsteps of Sky+ HD and uses a satellite dish to beam live television onto your screens. That said, Sky Stream isn’t a totally new idea – Sky Glass, the custom-designed 4K TV that Sky launched last year, uses the same approach.
Sky Glass and Sky Stream offer an identical viewing experience …but the latter can be plugged into any television you already own, whereas Sky Glass is your new television. Glass TVs start from £13 per month, plus the bundle of channels. With Sky Stream, there’s a one-off cost of £39.95, which drops to just £20 if you decide to take an 18-month contract, plus the bundle of channels. If maths isn’t your strongest suit, it’s a saving of at least £609.05 compared with the 43-inch Sky Glass.
Sky Stream supports 4K Ultra HD, HDR, and Dolby surround sound – so those with a good television should enjoy a superb viewing experience.
Stream can be plugged into any telly in your home with an HDMI cable (Image: SKY)
Don’t be fooled by its diddy size, Sky Stream packs all of the same features as Sky Glass.
That means you’ll be able to use your voice to search across live channels and streaming services such as Disney+, Netflix, Prime Video, BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All4 and Peacock at the same time. This means you’ll never accidentally buy something in the Sky Store that’s already included with one of your streaming subscriptions.
You can also use voice search to find new shows and movies too. Simply say “Show me comedy” to search for new boxsets or get some inspiration. As you use Sky Stream, the clever box will begin to get a sense of your tastes and offer better recommendations based on your viewing history.
These recommendations will only be on channels or streamers you currently pay for – so Sky Stream won’t suggest endless films on Sky Cinema or boxsets on Prime Video if you don’t have either of those on your box, for example. We praised the AI-powered recommendations in our in-depth Sky Glass review.
Sky Stream requires a Wi-Fi connection to beam live Sky TV channels to your telly (Image: SKY)
Sky Stream also supports the nifty Restart feature found on Sky Glass too, which lets you jump back to the beginning of any show that’s on live telly.
You’ll never have to endure an incomplete recording or wait for the show to make its way to BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub or All4 ever again – just hit the button on the remote and you’ll travel back in time to the beginning of the broadcast.
Like Sky Glass, recordings have been ditched from Sky Stream. Instead of setting recordings for the shows, sports and films you like – and then recording them onto a spinning hard-drive to revisit later, like the more traditional Sky Q box, Sky Stream uses a feature called Playlists.
Adding something to your Playlists works in a very similar, with the + button on the remote quickly shows from the TV Guide to the Playlist tab. However, since there’s no recording taking place within the set-top box – you’ll never run out of storage or get an incomplete recording because of a bad satellite signal or power cut.
Don’t be fooled by its diddy size, Sky Stream arrives with the same features as Sky Glass
Playlists brings together shows, films and sports from the dizzying number of streaming and catch-up services available. For example, if you add the latest episode of The Masked Singer into your Playlist, you’ll actually be watching the on-demand episode from ITV Hub when you watch at a later date – not a personal recording you’ve made on your set-top box.
The feature is designed to surface previous episodes too. So, when you add the latest episode of Inside Number 9 to your Playlist, it will also surface the previous series of the show, which are available to watch on Netflix. This is particularly useful if you’re a little late to the show that everyone is talking about – with all previous seasons (no matter which streamer is hosting them) pulled into your Playlist so you can binge-watch and get up-to-date before the latest weekly instalment appears in your Playlist in the coming days.
This is something that simply isn’t possible with older hardware from Sky, with Q users forced to jump into the dedicated Netflix or Disney+ app to find older seasons of a show they’ve got on Series Link in the Recordings menu. That said, the ability to keep recordings indefinitely – instead of the show vanishing from Playlists when its removed from the BBC iPlayer or ITV Hub on-demand catalogue – is something that we praised in our Sky Q review.
Sky Stream is bundled with the same redesigned remote control as Sky Glass (Image: SKY)
Sky Stream supports Sky Go, so you’ll be able to watch live television, shows and movies from your Playlist, and more on your iPhone, iPad, Android phone and tablet, Playstation, Xbox, and Apple TV. Like Sky Glass, Stream ships with a redesigned remote control with backlit buttons for late-night viewing.
Speaking about the arrival of Sky Stream, Executive Vice President and CEO for UK and Europe Stephen van Rooyen said: “Sky’s always reinvented the TV experience and offered the best content – but it’s not always been accessible to everyone.
“There couldn’t be a better time to launch our latest innovation using the Sky Glass Platform – whether you want to stream House of the Dragon, Gangs of London or Stranger Things, Sky Stream has it all. It’s the most affordable and easiest way to get Sky TV and Netflix together, offering consumers the value they are seeking right now.”