Sky Q list of failings v sky plus

Not a sky fan

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Id like customers to know what they are in for. Q is not an advancement over plus. Q has UHD, which is barely better than HD as even the sky MD mentioned at launch. Q has the option to record 6 programmes at once. Which with on demand services these days you’ll never need.

If you have sky plus and thinking of “upgrading” think very carefully. If your tv is HD only, dont. If your tv is uhd capable, debatable.
If your tv is not a smart tv or other TVs in the house lack smart feature maybe.

Sky plus had poor distribution via rf. but you could feed at as many TVs as your set up would allow.
Sky q will only allow 2 extra mini boxes. And these are NOT uhd.
So you can only feed 1 tv with uhd from sky. 3 boxes Max per household.

HDR is a bit of a joke. High Dynamic Range is available but only in 3 documentary’s. Hopefully as a new customer you’ll actually get an hdr comparable box. Instead of one of the numerous other incompatible
models existing customers have and have to pay to swap for and HDR model. Don’t hold your breath on more content either

Picture quality is ok. Nothing more than that. If you watch uhd or hdr
through Netflix on your TV app you will see a better picture than you will via sky’s Netflix or YouTube app

Audio has done DD+ but it’s pointless because sky don’t know what it means to delay the audio to match the picture and get the lip sync right. Increasing the “delay “ setting actually advances the audio relative to the picture there by making the discrepancy worse. How sky have managed to make the mistake, and then continue to ignore it in each update since launch is frankly a disgrace.
Then there’s the audio drop outs. Garbled under water noises Jim Davidsons dodgy microphone would be proud of. How’s that with your DD+ top of the line audio system? 🤦🏻‍♂️

They dropped the ring main extender for distribution before launch all those years ago as they couldn’t make it work. They also motorised a touch remote control feature. Yep you guessed it they couldn't make that work either. But they didn’t remove that feature, rather add a setting to turn touch off. Then realised there’s no point having a touch remote at all so they no longer ship the much nicer touch remote with the box.

Will update as time goes by

Not impressed personally
 
It's wrong in a few places.

I have regularly been using more than 2 tuners, especially for sporting events (which often aren't available in full on demand), There have been weekends where F1, BTCC and the top cycling events (Vuelta & Giro) have been on at the same time.

Sky allow up to 4 mini boxes, but only 2 can be used for Sky viewing at a time (it's possible to use the apps though).

There are only 2 Q main boxes which don't support HDR - the original 1TB box, which doesn't even do UHD (and was never advertised as being able to) and the first 2TB box. Personally don't agree with the £50 upgrade fee for changing that one, but know that quite a few have managed to get that waived by agreeing to a new contract, which seems a fair result.

HDR content - more than just 3 documentaries now. Quite a few Sky Originals (Brassic, Britannia, etc) and a few movies are available. They're saying 40 movies in December too - Sky Q adds HDR movies in time for Christmas and more new features

I've had Q since launch and the first 6 months or so weren't good - if was definitely released too early. But I'd never go back to the old Sky+HD system (use it from time to time at a family member's) . It's more stable than my old Sky+HD was - that needed a reboot once a month to keep the red button features working properly for Sky Sports F1. Don't have that problem and the red button functionality is way better on Q too.

The powerline was a mistake - part of the problem was that it was based on an earlier version, so didn't have the throughput needed.
 
The sound drop outs are really annoying, not a problem I ever had with Sky HD.
 
With Dolby digital plus being transmitted for UHD customers does the sound not improve? My understanding is that DD plus is more efficient and doesn’t require as much bitrate to sound as good.
 
The Quality of Dolby decoding as far as I’ve ever been aware, has never been in question.

The problem is
1) sky’s acceptance that the issue exists
2) sky’s capability to deliver it in an acceptable way

And btw I did have the same problem on our Sky plus hd 2tb box. So how do you know it’s sky I hear you cry? Well through upgrading all out equipment, the tv, the amp, the cables AND obvs the sky box, have all been replaced.... the problem still exists in the exact same way.

The ONLY common in all the hardware we’ve owned is the sky subscription in that it only ever happens on sky. Hear the garbled audio, swap input away from sky, problem gone. Back to sky input, problem still there. The only thing that affects it is changing the sky channel and then back again. And then of course if you’ve rewound then the rewind is lost 😡 so then your off looking for catch up to continue the programme and if your lucky you’ll find the programme is actually available

Infuriating pile of carp
 
Have you not reported it to Sky, taken videos, had an engineer look at it? This isn’t something I’ve come across.
 
Sky Q is immeasurably better than the old SkyHD platform.

It's not perfect by any means, such as trying to dig out UHD content which is not the easiest to find and a few other foibles, but on the whole it is night and day compared to the crappy slow old SkyHD software.
 
Have you not reported it to Sky, taken videos, had an engineer look at it? This isn’t something I’ve come across.
To what end? There’s a couple of threads 250 odd pages long of people complains about the same thing. As much as it’s clearly unfathomable that any one could have a different experience to your good self, equally, There’s no fix. We’ve already change the sky box. The tv. The amp. The cables. All in the persuit of the uhd Nervana. What do you suggest?
 
Sky Q is immeasurably better than the old SkyHD platform.

It's not perfect by any means, such as trying to dig out UHD content which is not the easiest to find and a few other foibles, but on the whole it is night and day compared to the crappy slow old SkyHD software.
Really? In what way?
The uhd aspect is better than HD, but not better than similar spec uhd on other platforms. It’s worse actually if you check...I mean jeez if one can’t deliver a uhd standard Q would never get off the ground.
And the aesthetics of the os is much better “to look at” although I gather they’ve upgraded sky plus os as well? But in the context of this thread of a comparison between plus and q I’m
1) not sure where sky hd fits in here,
2) the Q os is FAR less convenient to actually use.

It starts with the remote.

The pause and play buttons are combined in one button on Q. So that’s all it can do, stop ans start, so immediately you loose
1)the short cut to the planner to immediately play the last recording as on plus. And therefore back up to the planner. Also because the backup button doesn’t work the same way as plus did in that it has the function of the sky button had on plus. So touch back up and you again have immediately lost your place and your live pause and your back to the live broadcast on the last channel you watched. Your live pause is completely lost if the programme ended. So you have to record EVERTYTHING if you want to avoid that happening. How’s is that better? You notice sky have dropped the believe in better slogan ?

2) the combined play pause button means there’s no possibility to slow motion either forward or back.

3) also just to mention when you loose a recording you obviously have to go off and find it again as said. Which means another squilluon button presses where one press of the play button was enough on plus.

Then there’s the stupid pause play banner that covers the entire bottom third of the screen. Sky plus was a bit annoying in this regard with the spinning logo bottom left, but this is just daft with several complaints about it on sky forum.

The number of Button pushes is just ridiculous to get around the OS.
I’ve just counted ( in the middle of a pause just to see) 28 button presses to get to the audio delay feature in settings. 28! Now if I back up I loose my pause. So then there’s 6 further button presses to get back to where I was. And the audio delay setting doesn’t work as said, and if you do get it near, change the channel and that’s a different delay your starting over. So you suffer the lip sync. (And the drop outs/garbled audio as said) You can’t press sky to get back to live as that’s a different function now.

There may be some updates available for some of these things but that brings me to the eco setting. There’s three stand by options,
None, it never turns off.
Active.
Eco.
Unless you select “none” the box will turn off at some pointy to save power. All fine there. BUT....

If you have mini boxes in other parts of the house they don’t work if the main box turns itself off. So moo mah on the annex looses her sky tv on the small hours. And my tv in the bedroom gets a black screen. So you never turn off the main box or you have to go down stairs in the middle of the night and turn the main box on. And that turns the entire system on and wakes home the house with home cinema blaring 😆 ( not sure about that last bit it’s been a while tbh 😆) but you see my point? And re the updates, the updates don’t start if the box doesn’t turn off. You can’t win as far as I can see? So to be fair some of these things may of been fixed I suppose
I’m on Q130.000blah
 
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If you don't like it that much, cancel your subscription.
For me it has some quirks, but none that causes me to have a rant about it - life is too short.
 
If you don't like it that much, cancel your subscription.
For me it has some quirks, but none that causes me to have a rant about it - life is too short.
Yeah I keep getting that advice from the boys on the sky forum. What your telling me is, to go and destroy my credit rating. Thanks for that.

It’s not a question of dislike
It’s a question of disappointment in the product, and sky’s refusal to sort any of the faults.
Sky knew all this before launch which is demonstrated by their efforts to hide every aspect of the performance and content before subscribing.

It’s not so bad these days but a few years ago even asking the sky demo guys in shopping centres they’d refuse to speak to you about content if you didn’t have a subscription already, I should of smelt it then tbh.

It’s bad enough these issues exist. But then sky dig their heals in and refuse to a knowledge them. So getting a fix, well forget it. How many years did it take to get HDR content on sky? And we get 3 documentary’s and only 1 of those was visibly an improvement.
 
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It doesn’t integrate with the tv. The channel guide in the tuner that works with Freeview does not work with sky q.


The lag on the mini boxes is very poor. It is literally working by satellite over WiFi. It’s actually quite impressive they manage to get this much stability and data transfer via WiFi between boxes.
But don’t get me Started on how long it took sky to get it working, and the fiasco of the technicians visits
 
It took me a while to understand it I have to admit, but re the lip sync.

When you see that rarely does one ever need to advance the audio, only delay. As the title in that particular setting says, it specifically says audio DELAY. A means of DELAYING the arrival of the audio to match the video to achieve good match to sound and video. Right? You only ever need to DELAY the audio as the audio is quicker to process the video will pretty much always be late. Sorry to over state that as it’s pretty basic stuff.

Well not for sky. Sky think what delay means is you actually have to further advance the audio AHEAD of the already early videos arrival.

So when you go to add says 80ms of delay, it actually makes the lip sync WORSE by 80ms. Given the default setting is zero then..,. It’s not actually possible to delay the audio at all. Only advance it. There is NO delay in the audio delay setting.

When you see things like that one has to accept there really is no hope. I mean how stupid is that?
 
get it out your system mate. Nothing wrong with blowing a gasket from time to time. :D A lot of what you say is fair enough but at the end of the day we are the consumers and if we don't like the product we purchase we stop buying. Personally I think sky q is good and bad. I wish the picture was as good as my old Sky HD box. I think on UHD it is but normal HD is nowhere near what HD was! Not suffering lipsync issues so cant comment. Atmos sound drop outs though! I'd prefer sky to get PQ sorted first before adding any more bells and whistles.
 
Question
Why do I have to cancel rather than sky deliver DD+ as promised without drop outs
Or deliver live footy without picture break up their end?

I want the football movies bike racing cricket etc they promised and I’m pay for, WITH adverts I might add, in a subscription! Who has adverts in a subscription service?

They didn’t say you can have uhd but its sub par, there is no hdr, the audio drops out and the lip sync is a joke. They advertised it

...oppsing well deliver it !
 
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get it out your system mate. Nothing wrong with blowing a gasket from time to time. :D A lot of what you say is fair enough but at the end of the day we are the consumers and if we don't like the product we purchase we stop buying. Personally I think sky q is good and bad. I wish the picture was as good as my old Sky HD box. I think on UHD it is but normal HD is nowhere near what HD was! Not suffering lipsync issues so cant comment. Atmos sound drop outs though! I'd prefer sky to get PQ sorted first before adding any more bells and whistles.

Sadly I feel Ive only broken the surface 😆

Re bells and whistles a lot of companies seem to go this was these days. It’s take take take as you suggest

Apple. So busy chasing headline features they can’t fix the basic details like the predictive text or the phone app or losing emails etc

Microsoft well, ok bad example. What on earth are they going I don’t know

But we must get new customers. While the existing customers suffer their fellow customers telling them to cancel or shut up

How is that helpful? Your system is ok so nobody else is allowed to have a problem. “Well mines alright” ...thanks mate. It’s like car forums telling owners to take it to the dealer.

Well if I’m going to do that what’s the forum for? Selling sky? Bollards to that it’s appallingly implemented.
 
And breath... 😆
 
Can I take that you you are not much of a Sky fan? :D

Look I agree that Sky Q is far from what it's cracked up to be, and should be. In some ways it does seem to be a backward step from Sky HD, and the UHD was introduced almost under the radar, whereas Sky made great fanfare about being the first to introduce HD back in the day.

However, UHD is a nice to have, and I find the multiple tuners quite useful on occasions. The sound drop outs and distortions I have never come across myself. Eco standby ? Forget it, just switch it to none.

I think Sky have lost their way a bit recently and are not the innovators they once were. But they are still the best TV platform in the UK, albeit one that could be much better.
 
I get the audio dropouts too - they're utterly infuriating.

Oh and the effort that Sky put into subtitles are beyond a joke. Thanks for those 20cm tall subtitles.....right in the middle of the screen 🤦‍♂️

Neither were an issue with Virgin.

Neither, it seems, that Sky are willing to address.
 
Bookmarks missing as sky plus had. I don’t think many people used those but they were so handy.
 
Can I take that you you are not much of a Sky fan? :D

Look I agree that Sky Q is far from what it's cracked up to be, and should be. In some ways it does seem to be a backward step from Sky HD, and the UHD was introduced almost under the radar, whereas Sky made great fanfare about being the first to introduce HD back in the day.

However, UHD is a nice to have, and I find the multiple tuners quite useful on occasions. The sound drop outs and distortions I have never come across myself. Eco standby ? Forget it, just switch it to none.

I think Sky have lost their way a bit recently and are not the innovators they once were. But they are still the best TV platform in the UK, albeit one that could be much better.

I used to be. I thought sky plus and then plus hd in the 2TB box was utterly brilliant. I was so keen to get Q with uhd.... oh, the uhd isn’t that much better. And what’s this ridiculously over involved os. And WHERES THE SLOW MO FEATURE GONE. Only 2 other boxes allowed. No hdr at the time. And still so little hdr content it’s a joke. Back up button keeps .... oh lost goes on and on. The minis not working properly

I haven’t even mentioned the fiasco of actually getting the bloody thing installed. The contract negotiations. ...and then the pita of contacting sky repeatedly to get them to fix it.


Oh and the eco setting. Obviously that needs to be off. It’s a total pain otherwise as I mentioned earlier . But then the box doesn’t ever switch itself off, which I didn’t mention earlier, the box won’t update unless it’s off. So your stuck several updates behind without knowing. You can download the update manually, although it has to be off to apply it, then moo mah is moaning her telly is off.

... can’t really blame sky for moo mah though I suppose 😁

Surely the “market leader” can be a bit smarter than this? It’s every where you look. Minimum affort, that will do, we don’t need to try, and what we can’t get right we’ll just send it anyway.

Stuff the lip sync, the drop outs, the slow mo, the ring mane extender distribution, the touch remote, the bookmarks, the hdr, the picture break ups... nah don’t worry it will be fine we are market leader we can stick our head up our **** and hide behind the most appropriate slogan you ever heard. Believe in better.

What

A

Joke!
 
My Sky Q works without a problem.:hiya:
 
^ That's always good to hear :)

I wish mine was as trouble free - asked on the Sony UK forums about the audio dropout and it seems quite a few users on there also suffer the same issues 🤔
 
I used to be. I thought sky plus and then plus hd in the 2TB box was utterly brilliant. I was so keen to get Q with uhd.... oh, the uhd isn’t that much better. And what’s this ridiculously over involved os. And WHERES THE SLOW MO FEATURE GONE. Only 2 other boxes allowed. No hdr at the time. And still so little hdr content it’s a joke. Back up button keeps .... oh lost goes on and on. The minis not working properly

I haven’t even mentioned the fiasco of actually getting the bloody thing installed. The contract negotiations. ...and then the pita of contacting sky repeatedly to get them to fix it.


Oh and the eco setting. Obviously that needs to be off. It’s a total pain otherwise as I mentioned earlier . But then the box doesn’t ever switch itself off, which I didn’t mention earlier, the box won’t update unless it’s off. So your stuck several updates behind without knowing. You can download the update manually, although it has to be off to apply it, then moo mah is moaning her telly is off.

... can’t really blame sky for moo mah though I suppose 😁

Surely the “market leader” can be a bit smarter than this? It’s every where you look. Minimum affort, that will do, we don’t need to try, and what we can’t get right we’ll just send it anyway.

Stuff the lip sync, the drop outs, the slow mo, the ring mane extender distribution, the touch remote, the bookmarks, the hdr, the picture break ups... nah don’t worry it will be fine we are market leader we can stick our head up our **** and hide behind the most appropriate slogan you ever heard. Believe in better.

What

A

Joke!

Limit is 4 mini boxes, of which any 2 can be used for Sky at a time. The others can be used with apps.

And the standby mode setting has zero effect on whether the box updates or not. If Sky have set your account to receive the update, it'll apply, no matter what mode the box is in.

There's more HDR content coming when the Q14 rollout finishes next week - 34 movies.. then another 14 during December.
Tin Star series 3 looks like it'll be in HDR when it launches soon too, along with Gangs Of London and Chernobyl.

So not a massive catalogue, but it's definitely starting to grow.
 
Stuff the lip sync, the drop outs, the slow mo, the ring mane extender distribution, the touch remote, the bookmarks, the hdr, the picture break ups... nah don’t worry it will be fine we are market leader we can stick our head up our **** and hide behind the most appropriate slogan you ever heard. Believe in better.

What

A

Joke!

As I say, I don't have audio drop outs. Neither do i have lip sync issues or picture break up. The ring main "issue" is a non issue for me, I don't miss bookmarks, and I use a Harmony remote.

You are also incorrect to say that switching "Eco" off prevents firmware updates. I just switch the box into standby as normal when not watching - updates are received without problem.

I appreciate you have issues and as I say I do agree that Sky could and should be much better than it is, but I fear you are losing perspective on it. If you think about it logically, if everyone had the same issues as you, do you really think that Sky would be able to ignore it?
 

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