A couple of days ago I was listening to the breakfast show on a London-based music station, XFM. The two presenters were discussing what they were going to do that evening, and one was complaining that he was going to miss his favourite TV programme. "Ahh," replied the other presenter, "you can always Sky-plus it".
This is the first time I have ever heard Sky+ used as a verb and is a measure of the pull the satellite driven decoder/video recorder has over the media.
Delve into BSkyB's financial results as posted earlier this week and there's evidence that Sky+ is gaining ground among consumers too. The broadcaster claims to have now sold more than 250,000 machines, many of which have gone as a result of it suspending its ridiculous £10 a month subscription fee, aided by an imaginative advertising campaign that Sky launched at the end of last year.
While there's no denying that the Sky+ box is a huge leap for consumer electronics it is far from perfect. There are a few enhancements we'd like to see. Here's our shopping list.
1: More storage At present the Sky+ unit offers 40Gigabytes of storage - enough for 40 hours of programming. This clearly isn't enough. There are hard disk upgrades available now via Sky, and many of its more technically minded customers have been whipping out the hard disk and replacing it with a significantly larger one (this obviously invalidates Sky's guarantee). We would, however, likely to see a unit with 240Gb, which incidentally has been rumoured for launch later in the year, sooner rather than later. A cheaper upgrade offer for existing Sky+ owners would be good too.
2: Remote programming The days of going out for an evening and missing a programme because you'd forgotten to set the timer would be gone forever, if only Sky offered a Wap site that enabled users to program the box remotely via mobile phone. Sky has promised this for later in the year, and may even allow user to set their Sky+ via a dedicated internet page.
3: Recording programmes at different quality levels The quality level on the Sky+ unit is fixed. It would be good to be able to choose a lower quality setting for recording soaps and sit-coms, while being able to archive home movie footage in the best quality video.
4: Broadband connectivity It is a little surprising that Sky hasn't gone down this route already. Add broadband connectivity plus an Ethernet connection for plugging the unit into a home network and a huge range of possibilities become available. You could listen to MP3 music on your living room home entertainment system, or watch videos on your TV directly via the internet. It would also open up a new world of possibilities for Sky's interactive services. Maybe this is something Sky will launch later in they year, calling it Sky+ +, or Sky + Super.
5: Streamed wireless video to other TVs You can already do this using an analogue device called a video sender, but you lose sound and picture quality. With all that superb programming broadcast live to the box and stored on the unit, the Sky+ is an obvious choice for a home video server pumping out content throughout the home. Obviously there would have to be some enhancements to the unit, which would effectively turn it into even more of a PC style product. Also the wireless format would have to be fast enough to contend with the multiple stream of quality video from the unit too, something that is way beyond current systems 802.11b and 802.11g.
6: Streaming programmes to remote devices You've paid your subscription, had the box installed and recorded the programme. Why should you only be able to watch it on TVs in your home? There are already companies like Allmimiedia, working on services that enable viewers to stream video stored on a hard disk recorder to PDAs and even phones via Wi-Fi. In the UK this would not only work well it would deliver a killer application for 3G networks.
6 Get the Sky+ functionality, but not have to subscribe to Sky To be fair, this is unlikely to happen. There will however soon be a serious rival to the Sky+ unit that works with the Freeview digital terrestrial signals that come though existing aerials.
The Digifusion FVRT1000, which launches in April, pairs a Freeview decoder with a 40Gigabyte hard disk. Unlike similar products from Pace and Humax it features a programme guide that gives what's on information for up to a week in advance. The Pace and Humax recorders, to say nothing of the other digital TV decoders, only say what is on now and what is coming next.
Another bonus is that for each programme it records it takes a screen grab every five minutes which it displays on the programme menu, enabling users to negotiate their way round individual programmes much faster than they can on a Sky+ unit. Users can also choose the quality levels they want for each recording, so they can store up to 60 hours of programming on the unit - 20 more than the Sky + box.
Digifusion has a second model due later in the year that features a 120Gigabyte hard disk and some additional software tweaks.
Sky Plus Allmimedia.com Digifusion
