If you have been with Sky for years and then swapped to a SkyQ box, do you hate it as much as me?

[WheresMyMask]

Been with sky for years and moved house so they upgraded us to a Sky Q box.
It's bloody awful. Nothing make sense. Nothing is in the right place and the buttons don't make sense either.
I told myself it's because I'm getting old and I just need to get used to it.

But it's been 18 months and it's still a pile of confusing shit.

To the point where I'm considering going back to Virgin or other.

Does anyone else feel the same or is it because I'm old and don't like change?

@Wejustdontknow please don’t take it as a criticism of everyone who worked there! And I know it’s impossible to please everyone. It just feels less intuitive than say an apple product, perhaps that’s the issue, the bugs are also frustrating as you just feel like they should have been ironed out or acknowledged by sky earlier.

We were thinking of upgrading to it... maybe not now!!!

Things I love about Sky Q - the massive capacity, the easy no cable multi-box option.

Things I don't like.

Why does the back button not step you back 1 step rather than all the way out?
Navigating the planner is a faff, yes there is FF button to skip a day, but no page down. Once you're deep in the planner it's hard to get back 1 level to the menu.
The remote is much less well laid out (you could pretty much learn to use the old remotes in the dark as they had really easy to find buttons) and just doesn't sit in the hand well.
There doesn't seem to be a 'start program 20 minutes in' option on playback.

@fiorentina no criticism taken 🙂 just wanted to share my experience as I was actively there and working on the product. The interface was such a small insignificance to me at that time it’s only once it got to customers that this was seen as a problem. It was always pitched as a completely different product, they didn’t want it to be like sky+, I remember when it first went to customers one of the main things people were asking for was a favourite’s option, at the time the big boss man so to speak was adamant it would never have it as that was a sky+ feature but it ended up being added in. I think the dream of a separate product did not work from a customer perspective, what they wanted was the sky+ everyone knows and uses with the new features skyQ could give such as watching in any room and the boxes being linked together

It's fine.

I never used the Favourites option on Sky+ so I hadn't realised it wasn't on SkyQ at first (we had it fairly early on). We had masses of problems with connectivity between boxes in the first few months but it's been fine for a long time now.

Sounds quite complicated to use, and not very customer-friendly. I think I'll pass. Wejustdontknow thanks for posting the insider info! No offence, but your 'big boss man' sounds a bit of a twit, refusing to build in features that customers knew and found useful on Sky+, just for the sake of Sky Q being a 'totally different product'. What did he think it was all for? Obviously the customers! Sounds like he regarded it as his pet science product.

But my Sky+ is still working well, and as they say 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. I've had it about 10 years, hopefully, it will keep on going for a while longer. To be honest, I am just trying to get down the amount of stuff I have recorded on there (usually 90% or more full), and then I will switch to mostly streaming, using a Chromecast. I'll use Now TV to get the Sky exclusive programming, it's much cheaper.

My understanding is that they are no longer making the Sky plus boxes. But it isn't true that the satellite dishes are exclusive to Sky Q like a pp said. When we moved to this address and brought our Sky Plus box with us we found that the previous residents had had Sky Q and it wouldn't work straight away. But we just had to get a twiddly thing changed on the Sky Dish to turn it all back to Sky Plus, cost about £40 to get someone to do it.

I really, really miss the reminder option. I used that every day.

Yes hate ours too, it’s not at all logical and very hard to tell which bit is highlighted.

It's the remote that drives me mad the most. The buttons press too easily so you accidentally touch it on the sofa and it takes you somewhere random.

Oh, I find it much better than the old sky box, more intuitive, and was fine with it within a few mins, surprised with all these responses.

I love the Sky Q, so much recording space. Why don’t you like it? I know initially we had an issue with random recordings, once we disabled the push recordings it was fine no further issues.

Reminder was another feature of Sky+ that I never used. I really cannot imagine going back, SkyQ is way, way superior IMO.

We left sky finally after 20 years. Ever incasing price for ever worsening service.

Been with sky q0 years and had the Q box about a month back and we hate it. Plus I'm devastated I lost click and collect and all of motherland from my old box.

That should say been with sky 10 years

I absolutely hate this Q box. It keeps freezing and apps hardly work and now some buttons on the remote wont work and ive only had it a month. Thank goodness I’ve still got my old box. Just need to switch it back over

Sky always sounds very stressful to me. I'm getting Now TV entertainment package for £2.99 a month for six months and it suits me lovely. I'll cancel at the end of my offer and they'll usually come back to me with a similar or better deal within a few days. I can't record, no, but the shows are all on there to watch whenever you want so you don't need to record things.

Don't do sport tbf so if you need that, well, ok.

I hate the bloody thing. I’m trying to catch up on Corrie from last week and it’s bloody hard work.

Motherland is all available for free on BBC iplayer @OohKittens

This is interesting. We’re just out of contract with Sky & considering whether to stay & upgrade to Sky Q or leave completely.

We’re paying £100 a month for our sky package which is such a lot of money.

£100 a month @FrownedUpon ? What are you getting for that if you don't mind me asking...

It’s for TV, phone & broadband. Includes Sky Sports & Movies. I definitely need to shop around for cheaper deals.

Is it possible to change packages mid-way through a contract with Sky, we're paying over the odds for SkyQ and it's bloody useless!!

Interesting old thread, good to see one of the developers admit it's utter shite at networking. Sky Q boxes cause more trouble for my (high end) smart home business than all the other bits of kit combined.
An utter nightmare, my guys usually hard wire to them, turn off all their networking etc piss about turning STP off etc. Quite often run them through a basic network switch and the fucking things can still play up. Having multiple Q boxes on a wireless network is asking for trouble. We've stopped offering support on Q box related issues now, if we can see remotely that our kit is stable and working we won't attend.

And the UI is shite. Everything about them is shite.
Should be renamed
Sky shitebox