Sky Stream: New IPTV platform including box is launched

Sky announced the new “Sky Stream” in March, and the new platform and the new reception box are available today, Wednesday. It should be rolled out in Austria next year. We have already been able to try the box for a few days.

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As the name suggests, Sky relies entirely on IPTV for “Sky Stream”; accordingly, the corresponding box offers neither a DVB connection nor a hard drive. The company has had a player of this type in its range for some time now, the “Sky Q IPTV Box”, but the new box is the first box to bring together all television content on a single surface – whether premium content from Sky or free TV channels HD, apps or content from streaming services such as Disney+ and Netflix.

Appropriately, the entire available range of content is divided into categories such as “Series and Documentaries”, “Movies” (each with a genre) and “Sports”. Searches and personal watchlists work across all sources and channels, too.

Sky is also going on the offensive in terms of price. The new box is available from 15 euros per month including Sky Entertainment with Netflix, which includes free TV in HD quality and, according to the company, thousands of series, documentaries and shows. This package can be expanded with premium packages (Bundesliga, Sport, Cinema) and additional options. You can find the complete channel overview here official website.

first sight

What immediately stands out positively is that the new box starts up much faster than the Sky-Q model. Navigating through the menus and options is also more intuitive here. Anyone who wants to watch a movie or series spontaneously and has a subscription to various video streaming services will quickly learn to appreciate the division into categories and genres. Although there are no usual direct buttons for Netflix & Co on the remote control (which can also be used for voice search) an electronic program guide for live TV is still available.

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Initially, Sky expanded its partnership with ProSiebenSat.1 (P7S1) so that all channels of the channel chain and the Joyn streaming service could be found on all Sky platforms. However, we noticed a limitation: While the current program on public broadcasters and the RTL Group could be resumed if you started late, this function was not available on the P7S1 channels. In addition, no TV recording (in the cloud) is possible. In addition to the linear broadcast, you can only access content that is available in the respective media library.

Technically there is nothing to complain about the box: it supports Wi-Fi 6, has Bluetooth 5.1 and has an Ethernet port of up to 100 Mb/s. It outputs the video image up to UHD resolution with 3860 x 2160 pixels, and with appropriate content also includes an extended contrast range (high dynamic range) up to the dynamic format Dolby Vision and the broadcast version HLG. The box also scores points when it comes to sound: with the appropriate system, it is available in the 3D sound format Dolby Atmos if you access the corresponding content from Sky, Apple TV+, Disney+, Netflix or Prime Video.

(Private)