Will Sky Q be a worthwhile upgrade?

The New Year is just around the corner, and while for most of us that means stepping out of a hedonistic holiday meal coma and vowing to make a change, Sky faces the barrel of another Sky + anniversary. January 2016 will mark the 16th anniversary of the service that helped Sky become one of the largest pay TV operators in the country. It was a box that brought the idea of ​​recording and manipulating live television into the mainstream and gave us permission to make a cup of tea in the middle of a crucial scene. Simply put, he changed the game to watching TV in the UK, but as we get closer to his 14th birthday, it starts to seem a bit long on the tooth.

This is why Sky recently took the podium to announce Sky Q. It is not a complete replacement for Sky +, which will continue to exist as the entry-level Sky product, but will replace Sky + for those who are serious about their vision of television. So will Sky Q be a worthwhile upgrade for customers looking to improve their TV experience?

Let’s talk about the hardware first, that is, the Sky Q box itself. The main cube box is known as Sky Q Silver. It’s a unit about half the thickness of the current Sky + HD case, but it manages to fit in a number of pretty impressive updates. There are now 12 separate tuners (instead of 4) and 2TB of storage built into the device, for a large collection of recordings. That increase in tuners means you can now accomplish things like having five different devices watching separate channels while continuing to record on two others. There’s also a brand-new remote control, which beeps if you lose it between the sofa cushions.

Along with the main Silver unit, there are a number of smaller Sky Q Mini boxes, which connect to the main hub via a built-in Wi-Fi network and allow full access to all main box functions in the rooms of your home. . All of these can be connected via an optional Sky Q Hub that uses Powerline and Wi-Fi technology to link all of your Sky Q boxes together to power your home Wi-Fi network, ensuring your entire home is covered. by powerful Wi-Fi. sign.

That alone might make it a worthwhile upgrade for those with large households or multiple TVs, but that’s not all that Sky Q offers. Along with dedicated boxes for watching TV, Sky Q allows tablet users to transform your screen on another TV, with full access to recordings, live TV and all the other Sky Q features. But more than that, it will also allow you to do it away from home, so you never miss a TV event again. Everything is linked with a new user interface that brings everything up to date with a shiny new user interface and integrated applications.

Perhaps the biggest update though, and the one that those who choose to stick with Sky + are sure to miss, is the move to 4K. Currently, Sky does not have a 4K service (they say it will come later in 2016), but Sky Q is fully compatible with the new service. With many, if not most, of the newer TVs coming with 4K resolution as standard, the new Ultra-HD format is about to kick off in a big way, and with Sky Sports and Sky Movies, the company is in the thick of it. a great position to leverage and bring customers great content.

So is Sky Q a worthwhile upgrade? That will be a matter of pricing when Sky announces it, but from a purely technological standpoint, absolutely.