The Sky’s The Limit
As of writing this article service has resumed as normal on the recently released Xbox 360 Sky Player. Having originally launched towards the end of October, and quickly being taken offline due to massive demand for the service, the Sky team have been slowly trickling out access to eager subscribers. Assuming that we are now over the last of the humps, it is time to answer the most important question about this new service: is it actually any good? First things first, the Sky Player is not free, and the pricing is a little complicated. Here is what you will definitely need: A gold account on your Xbox, and some sort of subscription with Sky. You do not need a satellite dish to access the shows, nor do you need to be in the building that the sky account is registered with. However, even with your Gold account and your Sky Subscription, you probably have to pay something extra to access all of the material available to you. In order to access most of the material, including watching Live TV, you will need to either have a Sky Multiroom Subscription or get your internet through Sky. Although having said that, some shows can only be accessed on demand for a price.
Barring anymore mistakes the Sky Player should be available to all by now.
At first, that sounds like a bit of a rip off. Why bother with the Sky Player if you cannot watch your favourite shows whenever you want, without paying anything extra? I must admit to having the same thoughts myself at first. However, upon thinking about it further, the complexities of negotiating a deal with all of the various makers of the TV shows and making sure that everyone is financially satisfied would be not only induce a headache of epic proportions, but would also make the service insanely expensive. Make no mistake, Microsoft and Sky have not partnered up because they love us and want us to be able to watch whatever we want whenever we want. They have partnered up to sell more units and get more subscriptions, plain and simple. Having faced the hard reality, what is there to praise about the Sky Player? If, for instance, you have an elderly relative that would never ever consider purchasing an Xbox to use the Sky Player, then you can use their log in details to access the service on your Xbox even if you are not in the same building as them. Obviously you would need to ask them for their details and have their expressed permission before attempting it, or face legal action.
For an additional price on top of your basic subscription you can watch Live TV
If you like movies then you may very well be pleased with the selection of movies available on demand through Sky Player. There are over 400 films on the service at the moment, with more films added each week. You can watch them whenever you like, streaming them over the internet. The picture quality is about comparable to DVD, perhaps even a little better, but there are no HD movies available for streaming at the moment, likely down to the appallingly slow internet speeds in this country. There is a decent selection of movies from all genres from the last 80 years, with films ranging from classics like A Streetcar Named Desire to recent releases such as How To Loose Friends And Alienate People. If, for whatever reason, you decide to stop watching you can resume from wherever you left off at any time which is a welcome feature. It seems like the UK’s answer to the USA’s Netflix service – Netflix is a DVD rental service much like Lovefilm, which also allows you to stream movies to your Xbox. This aspect of the service is the real gem of the Sky Player, and you can completely see where Microsoft are coming from when they say that digital distribution is the future of movies. You can easily see a time where you no longer need to keep DVDs cluttering up your house, as all of your movies are stored online and available to watch whenever you want. The only downside at this point in time is that during peak hours some of the films will pause about half way through and start buffering again. When the UK’s internet speeds are improved this should eliminate that problem.
There is a fairly broad selection of programming available
As far as Sports go, you can watch some of the latest Football, Rugby, Darts, and Boxing on demand. So long as your account subscribes to Sky Sports then you can access these matches for free, although you can only watch them Live if you have a Multiroom account or get your internet through Sky. There is a feature that allows you to watch Sports and Movies with your friends in an Xbox live party, including a virtual arena, but that seems a little pointless, as it reduces the size of the picture, and the whole point of the party feature is to be able to talk with your friends. I do not know about any one else, but I do not like talking to people while I am watching a film or show. Perhaps I am being unfair there, I’m sure there are plenty of people that will enjoy the feature out there. Somewhere. As someone that is not particularly interested in most sports, I have not really tried out this aspect of the service much, but it seems fairly decent for people that are in to that sort of thing. There are various documentaries and shows in the entertainment section, with a number of them being available for free. The selection of free shows and documentaries seems fairly arbitrary, with a biographic special on Arnold Schwarzenegger being free, but a biographic on Kate Blanchett costing 99p to watch. I would be interested in learning the reasoning behind this pricing decision.
A party of friends watches a recent game.
In summary the Sky Player has a lot of potential, with a focus on movies and sports and the subsequent social aspect of watching programs in party mode being the centre piece of the entire service. When you take in to account that even full sky subscribers can only really watch the shows at specific times dictated by Sky, the Sky Player seems incredibly attractive. If you have a full Sky subscription and your 360 is in the same room as your Sky Box then it probably is not worth bothering with, unless you want to access programs on demand. The real benefit of the 360 Sky Player is that it will allow those who cannot install a Satellite dish in their home to access a cut down version of the Sky service. Although similar on demand services have been available in the USA for years now, finally we in the UK have something comparable to our friends overseas.
Hmmm doesn’t look to useful to me. I’m on Virgin Media. I’ve got HD on demand films on that anyway
Me too Joe. Virgin Media’s V+ service is superb.
I’m envious of you guys there – where I am Virgin’s internet is as crappy as all the other providers in these parts. I can’t wait till they start installing the fibre optic cables! Until then I will make do with my lovely little sky player and just hope that it doesn’t break down again!
Yeah, I’ve got V+ too and I’ll never go back. 80GB is so much space to fill. Almost never watch live TV anymore. Makes me a bit worried about the way they are going to fund TV in the future though. I think TV ad prices will inevitebly go down due to the lack of people watching them and that’ll mean more expensive TV prices
I’ll stick with Virgin Media V+HD thanks