Why I’m cancelling my Sky subscription (before it’s been installed)

I’ve wanted Sky for maybe 30 years, on and off, but my mum raised me not to pay Rupert Murdoch any money. With Comcast’s acquisition of Sky in 2018 I can now pay Sky money without being told off, yay!

I’ve also long wanted to pay to watch HBO shows in the UK legally, most recently True Detective Season 3, and preferably with the option to pay to watch without ads, to match the experience I get with Netflix, Amazon Prime and BBC.

I subscribed to Sky recently, and have been able to use their streaming services while waiting for installation. Since then, I have encountered a lot of places where Sky’s service falls incredibly short of their competitors that I currently use— Netflix, Amazon Prime, Freesat and Freeview.

• I only need a streaming service. Sky’s streaming-only service, NowTV, maxes out at 720p. Netflix has had 4k content since 2014 and 1080p since its UK launch in 2011. This puts NowTV’s streaming quality at least 8 years behind Netflix — so I decided to go for a full Sky package instead.
• The desktop Sky Go app doesn’t download HD content, just SD.
• The Sky Go app allows you to watch live broadcasts from HD channels, but they don’t look HD on the stream— maybe 720p at a stretch. Their app doesn’t provide any details or statistics on stream quality as far as I can see.
• The Sky Go app is only available on a limited number of platforms — Mac OS, Windows, iOS, Android, some consoles.
• There is no compability with: Apple TV, Amazon Fire, Chromecast, Roku, or any TV manufacturers built in apps.
• They intentionally disable streaming from their iOS app via AirPlay and Chromecast.
• The PS4 app is limited compared to the desktop applications, yet you have to pay an extra £5/month to be able to use it. It can’t download, it can only stream. This means you have to watch a lot of unskippable ads when watching catch up.
• The PS4 app requires the latest PS4 OS update in order to run as it’s counted as ‘online content’, so if you boot your PS4 to watch something and there’s an OS update to install then you’ll miss the start of your live broadcast until the update has finished (easily 15 minutes) — or have to wait until it’s on catch up (this happened to me the second time I used the PS4 app). I accept this is an issue with the PS4 more than Sky- but it highlights why PS4 is not a good platform for TV content, and Sky Go is not compatible with any platforms that are.
• Upgrading your Sky package to get 4k content costs another £12/month (Netflix equivalent upgrade is £2/month)— and this is bundled with their unrelated multiroom package, i.e. if you want 4k then you also have to pay for multiroom whether you want it or not.
• Downloads and broadcasts on the Sky Q box max out at 1080i unless you have paid for 4k. So no 1080p, even for content that would have been available in 4k if you’d paid (to be fair, Netflix also do this — they even define Ultra HD, incorrectly I think, as 1080p+).
• Catch up plays 4–5+ ads if you stream and this repeats if you’re flicking through episodes trying to remember where you were up to — or if you were half way through an episode and want to go back to where you were. You can get around this by downloading first and then playing but this seems like a pointless exercise that only serves to make users wait and downloading isn’t convenient if you’re just flicking through episodes.
• Sky have an exclusive deal with HBO (which seems to be why HBO Go and HBO Now are not available in the UK) but don’t have a lot of recent content on catch up. The recently broadcast Silicon Valley, Succession and The Deuce are not currently available on catch up.
• You can only install/authorise their streaming app on a maximum of 4 devices. Netflix is unlimited as far as I know (they have a limit on simultaneous streams). Personally I’d like to have the app on my phone, my tablet, my laptop and my PS4 leaving no spaces for other members of the household.
• Their downloads expire. This is similar to their competitors, though Netflix provide a feature to extend an expiry date, which Sky don’t.
• If I record a TV show on my Freesat box, the recording doesn’t expire. Switch to a Sky Q box and record something from a free to air channel and it will expire. This means the Sky Q box has been intentionally crippled in a way that doesn’t affect the equivalent Freesat services.

I’m holding off on the hope that Apple come to some arrangement with HBO.