Sky Glass : The Tech

Broadcast has seen and heard the soon-to-be heavily marketed Sky Glass TV and is impressed by what Sky has created.

The Sky Glass replaces set-top-boxes, satellite dishes, sound bars, and all other TV-related peripherals with an all-in-one Sky-made TV.

It streams all Sky content, and provides access to all catch-up and OTT services, providing personalised curated content across all of these. The user experience when browsing and finding content is straightforward and intuitive. If you’re watching a programme where different series are available on different OTT providers, it finds them all for you and provides easy access irrespective of what service is hosting each season (assuming you’re subscribing to each of these services).

The TV is available in five colours and three sizes – small (43”), medium (55”) and large (65”). It’s available to purchase outright (from £649 to £1,049); or 48 monthly payments of £13; or 24 monthly payments of £42. The Sky Ultimate TV package that comes with the service starts at £26 a month.

The display is 4K HDR and, in the demos shown to Broadcast during the launch event this morning at Magazine London, the image quality was excellent across all genres.

The Dolby Atmos comes from a series of speakers built into the TV – left, centre and right speakers and a subwoofer, as well as upwards facing speakers at the top corners. The Sky Glass was demoed in a box-shaped room with no other furniture, and the immersive sound during Sky’s F1 coverage was really impressive. The sound was genuinely fully immersive, with the Sky Glass managing to recreate a cinematic sound experience akin to being in a room kitted out with a full Atmos speaker setup.

However, in a second demo in one of a series of little sheds (each coloured to match one of the five colours of the TV), the devices sounded noticeably less impressive. It’s fair to say, though, given the right layout of the room, the TV has the potential to provide incredible sound.

Microphones are also built into the TV to enable full voice control of all functions. It also has a content sensor that turns the display on from standby to display a series of full-screen clips of curated, recommended content. The TV turns back to standby again if you don’t interact with it.

As well as the Sky Glass display, Sky offers ‘pucks’ that plug into your existing TVs to provide the same content available through the Sky Glass.

Sky is going full-out on the marketing for the Sky Glass, with a massive advertising campaign, and is also creating pop up experiential events where the public can demo and try out different functions of the displays. Furthermore, Sky is also taking on retail space across the country to house and demo the screens.

It anticipates a proportion of existing Sky Q subscribers with satellite dishes transitioning over to Sky Glass, as well as new customers who currently aren’t able to access Sky through satellite dishes. The launch of Sky Glass won’t impact Sky’s NOW TV streaming services.