A major disadvantage of Sky’s streaming service became apparent this week as viewers lost control of their devices.
- Unclear what caused viewers to lose control of Sky Glass TVs and Sky Stream pucks.
- Sky told viewers to manually restart TVs
- Problem started on Thursday evening and continues into the weekend.
Three years after a bug-ridden launch, Sky Glass owners were cursing Sky this week after a fault caused viewers to lose control of their TVs.
Some viewers were not even able to turn on their TVs. In addition to Sky Glass TVs, some users reported issues with their Sky Stream puck, highlighting speculation that a routine update had gone wrong.
Acknowleding the problems, Sky apologised and directed affect users to a help guide on their support site.
Sky Glass/Sky Stream recovery guide
Problems started on Thursday, continuing into Friday evening, threatening to ruin weekend TV.
Updates have been the cause of a number of major IT issues this year. In July, a Crowdstrike update on Microsoft’s platforms took Sky News off air for several hours.
In the case of Sky Glass, Sky controls every aspect of how it works, leaving viewers without TV if it goes wrong.
However, Sky Stream puck users may still have the option to access TV channels and streaming apps through their own TV set as an alternative option. The same is true for Sky Q users, although they weren’t affected by this latest bug.
Sky Glass first launched in October 2021, soon followed by a flood of complaints from early adopters who reported various bugs and faults. Most issues were resolved in a software update issued to TVs within months of the launch.
RXTV staff | Image: Sky publicity image