Sky Player on Xbox 360 review

Thinking outside the Xbox

Reviewer: Jamie Carter
Review Date: 18 November 2009
Manufacturer: Microsoft
Price as reviewed: £varies
Latest price: compare

Our score

9/10

Full Review

Video-on-demand (VOD) is all the rage in TV and games. The BBC’s Project Canvas should initiate open platform set-top boxes in 2010 with elements of IPTV and video on demand streaming services. Sky needs a plan.

Similarly, Xbox bosses desperately need to combat the PlayStation 3 upcoming movie on-demand service that will sit alongside its existing BBC iPlayer interface. It’s expected to include streaming and downloading of 2000+ movies and many more TV shows.

Step forward the ultimate solution: Sky Player on Xbox 360. You’ll find it in the Video Marketplace on your Xbox 360. Once downloaded and various subs paid, (though it will let you watch a random live TV channel as a demo), the interface works in exactly the same way as its host’s dashboard.

That is, quite brilliantly. Spacious and uncluttered, ducking between the live TV channel slots and those for on-demand content is so easy, and so familiar. There’s rarely any delay, save for an occasional wait for the movies homepage to load.

As for live TV, if you pay your subs and go for the entertainment and sports packages, respectively, you’ll get Sky Screen 1 and Sky Screen 2, and ESPN, ESPN Classic, Sky Sports 1, 2, 3 and Xtra.

However, it’s unlikely viewers of the basic package will make much use of the live channels provided; iPlayer-envy is sure to set in. Sky channels include only Sky Real Lives, Sky Arts 1, Sky News and Sky Sports News (so no Sky One), plus third-party channels – GOLD, MTV, Eurosport UK, Nat Geo, Nat Geo Wild, History, Eden, Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Nickelodeon, Nick Jr and the Disney Channel.

The video on demand library is just as easy to navigate, and includes material from Sky One. As usual with Sky, content goes from the sublime to the ridiculous. On one hand there’s exclusive Premiership football and rugby aplenty – as on-demand re-runs, too – while a few flicks away are a stack of Gladiators episodes that cost 98p each. And a lifetime’s worth of Ross Kemp-related material.

For live TV only, it’s possible to watch in a virtual living room. Your avatar, along with your friends’ avatars (if you’ve invited them), sit together on a huge couch staring up at a bigscreen that shows the action. Get a headset and you can talk to your chums, or just click the Emote and you can make your feelings known, albeit in a rudimentary way; for sports TV your avatar can wave, shout, clap or remonstrate over a bad decision, while for movies can express love, fear, or even boredom. Pointless, yes, but fun.

The service works well on a 2Mbps broadband line, though if others are using the bandwidth live channels and VOD do buffer and cut out. There is an option to watch in medium or low quality too if your broadband line is shaky, but this is a last resort; make sure your broadband line is well over 2Mbps meg – 3Mbps should be fine – before considering Sky Player on the Xbox.

Content-wise, Sky subscribers get a similar service to their satellite feed, plus VOD. And if you’ve no Sky subs, there’s a taster trial before you commit to paying a considerable sum: for £29.99 you an get a Sky Player retail bundle pack that includes a month’s access to Sky Sports, a media remote and a 3 month Xbox LIVE Gold membership card.

Verdict

For non-Sky converts, you get what you pay for; an expensive though an excellent IPTV solution that fits seamlessly into the Xbox experience. For existing Sky subscribers, it’s a must-have no-brainer; grab yourself Sky in the bedroom, or even in another property, for the cost of Xbox LIVE Gold.

Full tags

Gaming, Home Cinema, Sky, Microsoft, Sky Player, Xbox 360

UK Shopping

game.co.uk, gamestation.co.uk, Amazon.co.uk, play.com, ebay.co.uk

US Shopping

Amazon.com, ebay.com

Comments

It has hundreds of movies on demand download (quite a reasonable and compelling selection too I thought) ... but a grand total of only 33 TV show episodes (almost all low budget reality TV shows, many for the same show).

It's also also poor to have no downloadable HD content for catchup - it's not like they don't have it, and batch transcoding isn't difficult technically - they must just not be willing to put resources at it, despite the premium cost they are charging.

I can understand not having streaming HD content yet, but even the SD quality is limited, with an artificially restricted frame rate that isn't acceptable on a service that costs so much and still has so many adverts on flagship channels (like Sky1).

Until the offering is technically better and comes with more content I'm going to stick with advertisement free HD downloads on a per-show basis from Apple TV, and look forward to iPlayer on my Freesat recorder that is coming on the next few weeks.

I am not put off by the price - I really wanted this and expected it would likely be priced in such a way as to not undercut their existing business model - but while I can download HD versions of shows on AppleTV without adverts in the same week they air on Sky1 but am totally unable to get those shows via Sky Anytime, then it makes no sense for me.

* That the payment service totally fell over (and utterly to cope with demand gracefully, instead returning misc errors) left me feeling "I can't be bothered". Shame. Posted by Iain Collins, UK
The price in as utter joke. I understand they don't want to under cut their own business model but by charging for it this way the whole platform is redundant. If you want Sky then simply pay the same price (less if you consider the XBLive subscription) and get a satellite dish, giving you better quality footage.

We in the UK desperately needed the equivalent of Netflix that they have in North America. The obvious choice of Lovefilm.com was rumored but never appeared. Instead this Sky Player (that sounded amazing) arrived but priced way out of anything the average user could afford.

Very weak move Microsoft.

Posted by ADP, UK
As a Sky Movies subscriber Skyplayer makes sense. The on demand offer is fairly impressive, allowing me to watch movies on my own terms rather than waiting for something I want to watch cropping up on the linear movie channels. Quality pretty acceptable on my 32" LCDTV. Be interesting to see how often they refresh the content though. Microsoft do need to roll out BBC Iplayer quickly, given that Wii and PS3 now offer the service. Th Sky service is not going to be for everyone.

The Zune video marketplace added yesterday might turn out to be very interesting. I managed to watch an HD streaming clip of Avatar with 5.1 sound and no buffering, so it clearly can be done. Posted by Steve Spittle, UK
"For live TV only, it’s possible to watch in a virtual living room. Your avatar, along with your friends’ avatars (if you’ve invited them), sit together on a huge couch staring up at a bigscreen that shows the action. Get a headset and you can talk to your chums, or just click the Emote and you can make your feelings known, albeit in a rudimentary way; for sports TV your avatar can wave, shout, clap or remonstrate over a bad decision, while for movies can express love, fear, or even boredom. Pointless, yes, but fun."

Sounds good and would be if all the friends you wanted to invite didn't have to have the required subscription level to be able to join you. No subscription for your friends = no watch. This makes it utterly pointless from my point of view, you might as well watch it in better quality in your own house and just leave chat on the xbox. Posted by Matt, UK
Im sorry but sky player is shit. I fort getting a gold membership and a sky muiltroom sub would be worth it. Till i was told im only going to get 27 live tv channels. Its worthless. As i do not have movie on sky i dont get it on the xbox. TBH save your money and get sky muilt room more chanells record your programmes. Waste of time. M/S are greedy dickhead that just want our money they trying to make people pay for bbc iplayer. AS for sky i will be telling everyone i know sky is worthless on the xbox. 1/10 could be alot better Posted by James, uk