Sky customers, update your Xbox now! Today sees the Sky Player launch on Xbox 360, bringing a slew of on-demand goodies and live TV streaming. It’s slick, incredibly smart and could be enough to make you ditch the set-top box for good!
Fire up Sky Player and you’ll see the Xbox dashboard morph from familiar green hues to Sky’s deep blue. The design team have done a fantastic job of keeping Sky’s identity alive, but also sticking tightly to the Xbox interface’s slick familiarity.
Up front you’ll be offered on-demand content from any of the Sky TV channels in your existing package. That includes Sky Movies, Sky Sports and a wealth of third party channels including GOLD and ESPN. But that’s not all. If you’re a Sky Multiroom or Sky Broadband Unlimited customer you’ll get live channels at no extra cost, with streaming telly sent straight to the Xbox.
Sky Player on Xbox: See our hands-on photos now!
Those without a Sky TV subscription can still get involved. Sky offers TV packages through the Sky Player on a computer, and the Xbox, from £15 per month for the Base Entertainment Pack, rising to £40 per month for every channel available on Sky Player.
Take a peep at our hands-on photos and you’ll see Sky Player on Xbox is an impressive outing. There are over 400 on-demand movies that start within a couple of seconds of tapping into them, and Sky has even included its ultra-friendly EPG for live channels.
The cherry on top of Sky Player’s gateaux, however, is its support for the Xbox’s party modes. While browsing through live channels you’ll see if any of your friends are also watching them through Sky Player on Xbox. Their avatars will peep out of the side of channel logos and give you a cheery wave, inviting you to join them.
Read our full Sky Player on Xbox review
Dive in, and you’ll find your own avatar snuggled up on a virtual sofa next to theirs. You can then chat over the programme using the Xbox Live headset, or emote along with on-screen happenings by triggering your avatar to shout, jump around, or perform a handful of other actions.
There are even different actions, depending on the type of channel you’re watching and, yes, you can make your avatar shout at the ref during sports broadcasts.
Make the programme full-screen during party mode, and you’ll see avatar actions shown in a neat picture-in-picture screen, rather than zooming out to the entire virtual living room.
Out now | From £15 (free for Sky TV subscribers) | Sky
Meh, i’ll stick to PlayTV on the PS3… It doesn’t sound like a particularly good deal..
“£15 per month for the Base Entertainment Pack, rising to £40 per month for every channel available on Sky Player.” Thats the same as signing up to sky and getting a Satellite dish and reciever installed (plus of course £50 a year for Xbox Live Gold). And this is going to kill your bandwidth streaming television. I hope your ISP is ready for this (and that your broadband package is unlimited, as you may need to pay to upgrade that too).
seems Sky and Microsoft are milking the stupidity of Xbox gamers. A fool and his money…..
Still you can have stupid mii-like things wave at you, making your Xbox look like a PlayMobile party play set…
How can you say a fool and his money…. You bought a PS3 and if you pay £50 a year for gold then definately who is the fool, try looking around first and you might find you can get it for £27.
Except Sky Player access is also included *in* that cost of getting a dish and box installed in your house. Sky’s essentially giving you another way to access it. And you don’t have to use the Xbox in the same house as the dish. If you go away to uni, for instance, you can piggy back on mum and dad’s Sky subscription. Not a bad little deal.
Why on earth would you use a low-bandwidth crappy quality streaming service (that uses all your internet bandwidth) when you already have a Sky Box that can record???
Seems like a solution desperately trying to find a solution (and fools with too much money).
ITS WAS ON XBOX THIS MORNING BUT NOWS ITS GONE ???????
Sounds like it’s coming to PS3 soon anyway, and won’t require paying anything above the usual SkyPlayer/Sky subscriptions. Yet again Xbox owners get charged twice…
http://www.digitalchoices.co.uk/sky-player-heading-for-ps3-28102009.html