*** Sky Q Thread ***

It’s a shame they didn’t release a newer generation of this , it does feel its age now when compared to other devices. But I’m sure they want to move you to their streaming service instead.
 
steve5424 said:
You can't changes the listed apps in the shortcut button. Though to be honest I never use it, I use the apps directly on my tv as they work better and are more stable.

The tiles are meant to make it easier to find what you are looking for, by having a picture, as the box is fairly responsive it doesn't take too long to find and on the recordings screen they are listed with most recent recordings at the top. On the left you can filter a couple genres like movies. You can also list by recently watched.

As the mini boxes are just slaves, the recordings and downloads all happen on the main box and stream to the mini when playing. I can easily spot what my wife or daughter have chosen to watch as I have no interest in those and easy to tell what they are called. I never even look at those and don't go in to delete.

The Q menu style was all about the tiles and making the menus easier to navigate, I did take me a week or so to adjust to it, but now it's so easy to get to where I want.

Searching isn't something I do often but the voice search is probably the fastest way to find things. Press and hold, say a programme name or actor name and it finds everything it can. You can also search by quoting a movie, for example "who ya gonna call" brings up ghostbusters.

Yes it's slower as on the 2.4ghz WiFi but an ethernet makes it quicker and I usually click to download and you get a message on screen telling to its ready to watch within a minute usually. Sometimes less.
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Yeah, I don't imagine my parents will use many apps either to be fair, they'll just want to watch TV.
I can't see my parents using the filters, I'm not sure I'd be bothered either, everything on the box is so clunky it probably wastes more time than it saves. I don't remember the last time I recorded something and saw the name of it in a list (e.g. The Walking Dead) and thought, "I don't know what this is, if only there was a generic picture from the show to help me identify if this is the episode of The Walking Dead". I just wish there were options to disable it so it could be a little more like the old style boxes. Give the user a bit of choice.
I'm also annoyed that the mini boxes don't have their own storage for recordings as that could solve the issue of identifying recordings. While I'm unlikely to delete the wrong recording, I can't speak for my parents. Being able to filter the recordings by the box that initiated them would speed things up, my dad is likely to record the vast majority and use the main box, so being able to filter them out would make it quicker to find the recording made by the mini box which will probably be few and far between.
I'm not a fan of tiles in anything that uses them as the interface, but I think the Sky interface is especially bad, especially when compared to the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime or Disney+ (which are not perfect either). I guess this is the Sky interfaces age showing.
I find/found searching useful for boxsets or catch-up stuff, but I'm not sure how much my parents will bother with this so searching probably not a big concern. I also hate the voice commands stuff on all the remotes that do that and can't see my parents using it either.
I prefer to let a program download completely after having downloads fail part way through and thus interrupting the program (on the old Sky+HD boxes), so want it to download quickly. Again, not sure my parents will do this too much.

I do wonder if part of this is that you've been using the Sky Q interface so long you're used to it, but I'm coming in fresh so I'm smashing headfirst into all these things for the first time and have examples of what I consider better and more customer friendly interfaces.

the-evaluator said:
To make it seem a little bit more rubbish, they do support 5GHz networks but ONLY if you're using a Sky router. Using something else? 2.4GHz only for you. Crap, isn't it?

Personally I've hard wired both my boxes and disabled Wi-Fi on both via the hidden menu which has at least given me very stable connectivity.
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Since my router isn't a Sky router I don't think I can connect via ethernet as I think without a Sky router you have to connect all the boxes or none of them don't you?
 
To be honest after 8 years and watching programmes as soon as available I've never had a failed recording. I think because it uses the broadband for downloads its not likely to fail, where as on the old Sky HD system it uses the satellite signal to grab content.

We certainly don't find the interface slow or clunky qt all. But perhaps we've just used it for that long we've got accustomed to how it works and flows.

In terms of the mini boxes because all recordings and downloads are stored on the main boxes and toy could have a few mini boxes they felt it better to keep all content together as you can watch from anywhere and finish watching elsewhere.
 
steve5424 said:
To be honest after 8 years and watching programmes as soon as available I've never had a failed recording. I think because it uses the broadband for downloads its not likely to fail, where as on the old Sky HD system it uses the satellite signal to grab content.

We certainly don't find the interface slow or clunky qt all. But perhaps we've just used it for that long we've got accustomed to how it works and flows.

In terms of the mini boxes because all recordings and downloads are stored on the main boxes and toy could have a few mini boxes they felt it better to keep all content together as you can watch from anywhere and finish watching elsewhere.
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I think our old boxes did download from the internet but were much slower because the WiFi was not good. Connecting them via ethernet did help but they still weren't fast.

Yeah, I get their plan for the recordings but that's not how everyone will use it.
I guess that's my issue with all of it really, rather than offering options to suit everyone (or a lot of people) they're dictating how you have to do it with no compromises, and you pay through the teeth for the privilege of using it how they say and only how they say. You either adapt to how they want or you spend hours and hours on the phone trying to cancel only to be offered Sky Glass and Sky Stream every few minutes of the process with "amazing" offers where you can pay the same as everyone else and they'll give you and extra set of batteries for the remote control for half price.
 
Had a Sky engineer out to look at the issues.
Apparently the issues are because the router isn't a sky router, so they can't help. I guess this is another one of those things where Sky decide that rather than giving the customer choice they will make the customer do things their way (yes, I'm annoyed with Sky, still).

Does anyone know what setting(s) you need to change on a non-Sky router to get the WiFi playing nice?
 
GoogalyMoogaly said:
Had a Sky engineer out to look at the issues.
Apparently the issues are because the router isn't a sky router, so they can't help. I guess this is another one of those things where Sky decide that rather than giving the customer choice they will make the customer do things their way (yes, I'm annoyed with Sky, still).

Does anyone know what setting(s) you need to change on a non-Sky router to get the WiFi playing nice?
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Connect the SkyQ main box to router by ethernet, that is all you do. The mini box connects to the main box using it's own dedicated 5ghz mesh network. This is totally separate from the rest of your home wifi network.
Your so called Sky engineer was a lazy idiot in much the same way that a lot of Sky management are as well.
 
kitfit1 said:
Connect the SkyQ main box to router by ethernet, that is all you do. The mini box connects to the main box using it's own dedicated 5ghz mesh network. This is totally separate from the rest of your home wifi network.
Your so called Sky engineer was a lazy idiot in much the same way that a lot of Sky management are as well.
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It's not really practical to run ethernet to the main Sky Q box unfortunately.
The issue seems to be the 2 boxes communicating (as in mostly they can't) or the main box losing network connection.
 
I think it's the Sky Q to Sky Q mini box connection that's the issue. Both boxes seem to talk to the internet fine but changing channel on the mini box takes about 10-15 seconds and there are occasional freezes while emailing anything.
 
It might be worth changing the frequency and possibly channel width that the Sky boxes are using to communicate - it could be interfering with another 5GHz Wi-Fi network within range.

Go into the hidden menu on the main box by going to the menu, scrolling down to settings but NOT pressing OK but pressing 0, 0, 1 then select. Somewhere in there is the option to change it.
 
the-evaluator said:
It might be worth changing the frequency and possibly channel width that the Sky boxes are using to communicate - it could be interfering with another 5GHz Wi-Fi network within range.

Go into the hidden menu on the main box by going to the menu, scrolling down to settings but NOT pressing OK but pressing 0, 0, 1 then select. Somewhere in there is the option to change it.
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Tried this, initially seemed better, but then a bit later in the day was getting the same issue.

I don't think it's helping that one neighbour also has Sky Q, so is using the same 5G range but they also have their home wifi set to use the same 5G channel and bandwidth as the Sky Q boxes (apparently they have the same issue with their mini boxes and the engineer blamed their router too).

Ran a 30m ethernet cable to the main box to see if this fixed the issue.
There's still lag (a bit in the menus, but mostly take 3-5 seconds from changing the channel for it to actually appear) on the mini box even when both boxes are wired, but it's better than when using wireless.
But this isn't really a via solution, so now trying to decide between using powerline adaptors or a wireless ethernet adaptor so the main Sky Q box can at least think it's wired and then use either the power cables or existing wifi network to deal with data transmission.
These Sky Q boxes are truly **** for this to be a requirement! It should matter what router you have and the wifi options shouldn't be so limited, it's no wonder everyone keeps overlapping with each other.
 
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