More details have emerged about the rumoured Sky-branded smart televisions that were first leaked last week. It’s said the TVs are part of a new product range or service called “Sky Glass” and that they could launch as early as Thursday.
The TVs will be fairly premium products too, according to a story in ISPreview, which said Sky is planning to debut a range of QLED TVs that come with Sky TVs services built-in. The main advantage of this is that viewers will finally be able to watch channels such as Sky Sport without the need for a satellite dish, with content streamed over the internet instead, similar to what Netflix et all do.
Sky has been talking about getting into video streaming for some years already, and in fact it already does stream some of its channels to lucky customers in Austria, Germany and Italy.
Sky Glass would take it to another level though, ISPreview reports. It says Sky’s 4K resolution QLED TVs will come in 43-inch, 55-inch and 65-inch sizes and feature built-in Dolby Atmos soundbars and HDR support (it didn’t mention what formats). The report uses the word “QLED” which suggests the display may be similar to those found on Samsung Electronics’ high-end TVs, but that cannot be confirmed yet.
The TVs will launch together with a “Puck” device that apparently does the actual streaming, so we imagine that will somehow connect with the TV.
The report says the Puck will not be sold separately, so it seems the only option for those who really want dish-free Sky is to shell out on one of the Sky Glass TVs. Doing so could be quite expensive though, as the report says the 43-inch Sky Glass TV will be priced at £650. Customers will also have to pay a monthly subscription fee on top of that, and although unconfirmed, ISPreview says those fees will likely be similar to the “out-of-contract” price to access Sky TV. So it won’t come cheap.
A few other details – the report said Sky Glass will recommend a minimum broadband speed of 6Mbps to access the services, which is a tad faster than the minimum 5Mbps that’s recommended by Netflix to view HD content.
ISPreview adds that customers will be able to purchase a maximum of three Sky Glass systems and have up to six Pucks in one home, which will be able to run concurrently with 4K and HDR content.
A lot of questions remain unanswered though. From the report it sounds as though Sky Glass is a next-generation product that may replace Sky Q, but that remains unclear. The monthly subscription packages and prices are also yet to be confirmed, and of course, there’s no word on how much the bigger Sky TVs might cost. Lastly, we’d like to know if Sky might consider eventually selling the Puck device separately – a move that would make Sky Glass a more compelling proposition for those who own a superior TVs to Sky's branded models.
Sky is hosting a media event this Thursday, so we may have the answers to some of those question very soon.
