What They Say
What HiFi in the UK has reviewed the Sky Glass streaming TV from Sky. The review starts out by pointing out that because of the extra costs for the service cost, plus an extra for HDR as well as charges for Sports and Cinema, the monthly payment goes up from a headline “£13 ($17.50) per month” to “£89 ($120) per month”.
The reviewer didn’t like a feature that automatically turns the TV on when anyone enters the room to show trailers for shows and movies, although it can be disabled. Sky told the magazine that the feature could be used for artwork or photos, later, possibly.
Unlike the Sky Q box, the Glass TV doesn’t download streamed content, so if it becomes unavailable later, you miss the content (this happens frequently on the BBC iPlayer). The image quality of the 60Hz set is said be ‘good’ but doesn’t really impress the reviewer. Smearing is an issue and image quality washes out in high ambient and as the display is an LCD, it doesn’t have the contrast of an OLED.
What We Think
Overall, this seems to be an easy to use good(ish) quality TV. It’s not going to appeal to image quality enthusiasts (I would expect Mr Teoh to pull it apart!), but Sky is not aiming at enthusiasts with this set, it’s aiming for average viewers. The picture performance seems to be good enough for those users. However, streaming TVs are a new category and average buyers are not early adopters. There’s something of a contradiction, then. I guess Sky has to ensure that potential buyers feel it’s a safe and simple purchase. If it can do that, it could have a winner.
Persuading people that this is a simple safe purchase will not have been helped by a story that the firm took a long time to fix a security bug on its routers.
When is a TV not a TV? summarises my views on the Sky Glass concept. (BR)
