I received Sky Glass on January 28, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. There isn’t a whole lot of information out there about the service (hence the birth of this website) and some of what I’ve heard concerned me, but the chance to nab a new television without increasing my monthly payments drew me in. I know a lot of people are in the same boat as I was, searching for information that isn’t out there, wondering whether to bite the bullet, so I’ve started this Sky Glass Review where I’m documenting my experience, from the moment it arrived.
My television arrived at around 1:30 PM, delivered by a firm called Panther Logistics — not Sky itself. The couriers brought the device in, mounted it on the included stand and popped it on the console table, before taking the box and all of the rubbish and leaving. They were in and out in under half an hour. Not having to do the heavy-lifting was refreshing, but the lack of a formal handover process and no real documentation about how to use the service left a lot to be desired. It wouldn’t be so bad if there was some sort of introduction video.
Setting the Sky Glass TV up, from popping the plug into the wall to having live programming running in the background, takes less than ten minutes. It’ll immediately fire up after it’s connected to a power source. You then need to either connect it to Wi-Fi or select Ethernet if you’re using a wired connection. The television will then install a small update (your milage here may vary, depending on whether your model shipped running the latest firmware). It’ll then ask you to confirm your identity and set up a PIN, and just like that you’re in.
And that’s where the setup ends. There’s no formal introduction to the new interface, the Playlists feature that replaces recordings, or anything else baked in. It took us a while after setting up to figure out how to change HDMIs (they’re buried in the Inputs section — there’s no button on the remote control), what the three colored dots on the remote control mean (it’s prompts for the colored buttons, so when there’s an option to hit the red button to do something, you click that) and to learn how to best phrase the voice commands.
Right off the bat, there are a couple of pain points. Firstly, the Playlists feature is inconsistent. It’ll show you the last episode you watched for shows broadcast through Sky’s own servers, but you won’t know where you watched up from the Playlists screen for anything available through a streaming service like BBC iPlayer or Netflix. You can’t just open up a show and dive straight into the latest episode, either: They’re arranged from oldest to newest, instead of putting the latest episode at the front, which leads to a lot of scrolling.
We opted for three Sky Glass Pucks. Setup is about the same as the Sky Glass TV itself — plug them in, connect them to the internet then wait for them to update and finish the final steps. What’s frustrating here though is the fact each needs to be connected to streaming service individually, with Netflix being the exception to the rule here. If you subscribe to it through Sky’s Entertainment Bundle it’ll automatically be available on all of your Pucks. Everything else will need to be signed into individually on each Puck — and it takes time.
The television itself is fantastic. The 4K Ultra HD screen is crisp and clear, and the built-in sound system is top-notch.
