The streaming TV had some contrast issues when we first reviewed it, but those are now being ironed out
Exciting news for Sky Glass owners and potential buyers, with the recent roll-out of an update that aims to improve the streaming TV’s picture performance.
A few weeks back, we spent a morning at Sky’s extremely swish campus in Osterley, London. While most of our visit was dedicated to the Sky Stream Puck – which went on sale in October and, very impressively, makes the Sky Glass experience available to those who don’t want the Sky Glass TV – Sky also snuck in a surprise demo of the update for existing Sky Glass TVs, and we can attest that it appears to transform picture quality for the better.
In characteristically candid fashion, Fraser Stirling, Sky’s Global Chief Product Officer, explained that while the vast majority (80 per cent, apparently) of Sky Glass customers loved the picture and sound quality provided, the local dimming, in particular, hadn’t been performing as it should.
This flaw is something we highlighted in our original Sky Glass review, in which we commented that the TV “looks a little washed out and lacking in vibrancy”, and that it has “limited contrast”.
Rather than rest on its laurels with what was overall a very decent product, Sky has gone to seemingly great lengths to squeeze more performance out of the existing Glass hardware. And, in a side by side comparison of pre- and post-update Sky Glass TVs, the results look transformative.
The update is focused on the backlight and the way the TV’s local dimming algorithm controls how it is used. Essentially, the backlight was guilty at times of artificially (and somewhat aggressively) brightening or darkening the picture, and of struggling to combine bright and dark picture elements. A selection of test patterns involving white rectangles of various sizes and increasing brightness provided a stark demonstration of that issue, with the un-updated TV aggressively dimming the rectangles, which should be increasing in intensity. The TV with the new software, meanwhile, deftly handled each increase in brightness – and without any obvious loss in the depth of the surrounding black.
A big step forward
Of course, test patterns can reveal only so much, but the updated TV seemed to be just as much of a step forward with the selection of ‘real’ content that Sky used for the demo, which included clips from Spider-Man: No Way Home, Gangs Of London and a Premier League match. The improv
