Watching Sky has never been more affordable or more convenient
Streaming service | from £26/mth | whf.cm/SkyStream
However much enjoyment you might get out of it, there’s no denying that, up to now, getting Sky has been a bit of a pain. You have always had to book an engineer to come around to stick a satellite dish and associated cabling on your house – assuming you are even allowed to do that to your building – and set your satellite receiver up.
That has all changed, finally, with the launch of Sky Stream. Via a puck-like set-top streaming box you can now get satellite dish-free access on any TV of your choice to access the same unique Sky mix of 150-plus live channels, unmatched quantities of premium live sport, fully integrated third-party streaming service and vast library of on-demand movies and TV shows for which Sky has long been renowned.
It offers all this through Sky’s impressively content-focused, platform-neutral and ever-improving interface, too, and all without compromising Sky’s AV standards. In fact, its HD picture quality in particular comfortably outperforms that of the Sky Q satellite broadcasting platform.
The Sky Stream puck is small; about the width and depth of a drinks coaster, and stands only a couple of centimetres tall. In fact, with its matt black finish and glossy embossed Sky logo, it looks like an Apple TV 4K that has been sat on by an elephant. We first saw this puck supplied exclusively with the Sky Glass TV, which launched in October 2021. Again, that was far from the ideal way to get Sky, given that you needed to buy a big Sky Glass TV (again requiring a visit by a Sky installation team) that you might not really have wanted just to get a streamed rather than a broadcast version of the Sky platform.
Sky and Netflix combined packages are available from £26 a month (18-month contract). There is an up-front cost of £39.95 to buy the box, rather than, as with Sky Q, ‘rent’ it. This drops to £20 if you take out the 18-month sub. You can choose a 31-day rolling contract for £29. You will have to pay extra for Sky Cinema (from £11) and Sky Sports (from £25).
More controversially, you will also have to pay £6 a month extra to enjoy 4K HDR video and Dolby Atmos sound from your Sky Stream. Which most people reading this review very likely will want to be able to do. You will also need to spend an extra £12 a month (plus buy each extra box) if you want to have up to five extra Sky Stream pucks in your home to feed other TVs. And, while for the first 18 months of your Sky Stream use you
