Stupid questions about SKy and Smart TV

[Liveinthepresent]

DH and I are about to leave the dark ages and buy a new Smart TV.
We are also having a new cupboard in which to stash all the less modern looking technology - very excited about that bit!

Anyway just before we placed the order it occurred to us we haven't factored in where a sky box would go - as obviously it makes no sense to put this in a cupboard.
What do people do ? Am wondering if we can control sky without using the box constantly - an app or something?!
There isn't going to be room on the top of the cupboard for this box.

Or do we go down the virgin media route instead and avoid even needing this extra box.

Very badly worded post - thanks for any input!

No you'll need the Sky box for Sky. Or Virgin media - I believe they have a box as well.

Remember the same dangers apply to smart TV as to computers, that you can get 'hacked' etc, so take necessary precautions.

A cupboard with a glass window might help you...

As for getting 'hacked' - I think that's the first time I've seen such a warning. In many cases the smart devices have some sort of 'App Store' where you can download applications (for iPlayer, ITV Player, 4 on Demand, Demand 5, etc) and no other options exist, no anti-virus App in sight, so frankly I'd tend not to worry too much for now.

Not sure what "Smart TV" you plan to buy and I am no expert - don't even have a TV licence (but have a sister and friend who have bought so-called smart TVs, and been somewhat underwhelmed by the features). I have a NowTV box (costing 9.99, and subscribed to the movies for 3-4 months at the end of last year) which has players for all the "on demand" (ie not live) TV shows.

It's about the size of a beer mat, plain white with a small (white) LED that isn't very bright, and perhaps 1.5cm thick, with sockets on the back for power and HDMI. Unless you have tried out the TV in a shop for at least a half hour for browsing etc and feel sure it does what you want, I'd get a dumb TV and add a NowTV box as I think the extra for a 'Smart' TV may be a lot more than a tenner (OK, 20 quid if you get it with 2/3 months of Movies/ Entertainment - you need an active NowTV account to first register it, so paying 9.99 for it online will not get you very far).

The NowTV box is wireless and connects to your home broadband, and needs a minimum of (from memory) about 2.5 Mbps for downloading decent quality TV. I stream a fair amount from TWiT.tv ("This Week in Technology")... there's quite a lot of interesting info about Apple, Android, Windows (eg the new Windows 10 out next year), iPads, Google, security, etc.

There has been stuff in the press about Samsung tellies uploading viewing data from smart models even when the default option of allowing them to harvest data is turned off NG.
No advice for OP on how to arrange things. We have a freesat box but putting that in a cupboard wouldn't work either

You can control your sky by an app on your phone. It was great fun when I first got it as I used to change channel when dh was watching his rubbish on to something I wanted to watch and he had no clue how I done it. There's also a brilliant new feature where you can the photos on your phone on the TV through the app.