The new Sky Box: smaller and whiter than the old Sky Box

MediaSeptember 28, 2022

Sky’s new Sky Box is an improvement, but it still seems stuck in the past

Contributing writer

The new Sky Box: smaller and whiter than the old Sky Box

After almost 15 years, Sky is finally bringing out a new decoder. But while the hardware and features are new, the technology and business model feel old, writes Dylan Reeve.

Last week Sky TV announced two new devices to bring their channels to customer’s televisions — more than a decade after the last significant hardware upgrade arrived in the form of the MySky decoder, and two years after a prior plan to bring a new product to market was abandoned.

While they have technically announced two new set-top boxes, there’s really only one option for most people at the moment: the creatively named Sky Box.

The new decoder — apparently available only in a stunning white that will look fine alongside an XBox Series S but blinding alongside almost every other home entertainment device — will still require a dish on the roof, and an aerial cable poking out of the wall, but will also plug (or WiFi) into the internet.

The new box will do all that the old box did (tune into the many channels Sky offers; record shows to watch later; display an interactive electronic program guide). And it’ll even do some of those things better, providing a much larger drive for recordings and allowing up to five programs to be recorded simultaneously.

This box will cost $200 for new customers (although Sky will offer the ability to pay that off with an additional $10 fee per month). Existing customers will apparently receive discount pricing offers.

Alongside the dozens of live-to-air linear channels, it will also offer third-party apps. Sky is advertising support for Netflix and Disney+ – but the fact that the box runs Google’s Android TV operating system means it should be able to play host to any suitable app from the Google Play Store.

Of course, for anyone who has purchased a smart TV in the past few years which already natively supports the very same apps, the opportunity to have them in two places, controlled by two different remotes, probably isn’t that appealing.

The second offering announced alongside the Sky Box is the new Sky Pod – a small, hockey-puck-style device that can dangle from an available HDMI port and deliver the same Sky broadcast channels to the TV… without the dish!

But, you can’t have it. Unless you were a Vodafone TV customer (and then it’ll cost you $100).

Vodafone’s venture into television, in collaboration with Sky TV, delivered a small set-top box which used the magical power of the internet to bring live television to… well, a TV. It was, according to Spinoff publisher Duncan Greive, “the last box you’ll ever buy for your telly” — except, it won’t be, because Vodafone bailed out on the product last year, handing over the customer base to Sky and giving users nine months notice of the impending demise of their streaming service (the end date has since been extended due to the delays in bringing this replacement to market).

So now, with their inherited Vodafone TV customers in need of something new, Sky has delivered the Sky Pod for them, and only them (for now). It promises to do most of what Vodafone TV did (and some things it didn’t) using roughly the same technology.

The switch to Google’s television operating system is probably good for Sky customers, especially those who’ve steadfastly rejected an upgrade to one of those newfangled smart televisions, as it brings diversity to the box, allowing services like Netflix and Disney+ to sit alongside Sky’s offerings.

For a company that has struggled with falling revenues and a shrinking subscriber base (the February 2021 report celebrated a slowing of their continuing customer churn, declaring “the 1.8% reduction in the six months to 31 December 2020 [is] a significant improvement from the 3.2% reduction in the same period in 2019”), it seems a bold move to plop a gateway to their biggest competitors right into their customers’ living rooms.

The remote for the new Sky Box and Pod even features a dedicated Netflix button in pride of place at the top left. There is no similar button to be found for Sky’s own VOD platform, Neon.

For those of us who already have smart televisions, there’s nothing special about yet another way to access Netflix, but for customers who were previously faced with watching Bridgerton on a laptop, or some dusty old desktop PC in the corner, a shiny new box with a dedicated Netflix button on the remote is something that could easily prompt second thoughts about exactly how entertainment could be consumed (and how much it should cost).

What stands out most for me though, with the introduction of Android TV apps to Sky’s set-top boxes, is the lack of an offering the other way around. I have a smart TV that is more than capable of streaming HD and 4K content across the internet (actually, I have a few), but the only way I can watch what Sky has to offer is by sticking a dish on my roof and running a cable to one of my TVs.

Of course, once I do install that dish, and run that cable to the new shiny white Sky Box, I can install the Sky Go app on my phone or tablet and then “cast” them to some other TV — it’s far from a seamless experience. And, according to Sky’s website, only some channels are even available on that app.

But the Sky Pod is an Android TV device, and it offers Sky’s channels over an internet connection, so it’s clearly possible. It seems baffling that Sky — a broadcaster that is increasingly struggling in a market where viewers are spending more time in TV apps than watching broadcast TV — isn’t taking this opportunity to meet viewers where they are: on the “apps” screen of their smart TV.

The new box is bound to be an improvement on the nearly 15-year-old device it’s replacing. And the Sky Pod appears, at first glance, like a reasonable alternative for displaced Vodafone TV customers. But the innovation ends there — if you want to enjoy Sky’s offering, it has to be on Sky’s hardware only, there appears to be no hope of BYOTV in the near future. And if you want to watch Sky on more than one TV, you’ll need a decoder for each TV and Sky’s add-on Multiroom package.

Image: Archi Banal

OPINIONMediaSeptember 26, 2022

Our public media should serve audiences, not the interests of commercial rivals

Myles Thomas

Guest writer

Image: Archi Banal

Recent scaremongering over the effects of the TVNZ-RNZ merger on commercial media is half-baked and overblown, argues Better Public Media chair Myles Thomas.

The Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media Bill legislative process is hotting up with a few big developments going public in the last few days, presenting three new angles on the merger between TVNZ and RNZ.

Firstly, broadcasting and media minister Willie Jackson said TVNZ needs to change its approach to public media. He’s absolutely right. TVNZ is commercial, so its primary focus is serving audiences to its advertisers. That’s the opposite of public media, which is simply to serve audiences. The government has not spent four years researching and planning a new public entity for it to just be trashy old TVNZ all over again. And it’s excellent news that at least the minister is clear about that.

The second point to note was the commercial media submissions to the select committee. They showed large-scale fearmongering about dangers from the new entity that frankly are exaggerated. The commercial behemoth that is TVNZ has always severely hampered TV3/Mediaworks/Discovery’s success by being an aggressively dominant commercial television network. This is what the government of the day allowed them to do. If the new entity was to take that same highly-commercial approach with its news website, or with the radio station currently known as RNZ, then Stuff, NZME and all the existing news websites and newspapers would be facing a staunch new competitor. But the government is actually proposing something quite different – making TVNZ less commercial by giving it far better funding and requiring it to be non-profit.

‘If you regularly enjoy The Spinoff, and want it to continue, become a member today.’

Toby Manhire
— Editor-at-large

So the government is at last reining in TVNZ’s commercial dominance. You’d think the commercial media would be cheering the news, but no. The submissions and the articles about the submissions repeat the same lines of risks to plurality, skewing the market and being unfairly undermined. Stuff’s repeated line is that the new entity will compete with private media in “content, talent, and advertising markets, but from a cost base that no other private media operator could replicate”. This ignores the fact that TVNZ and RNZ already compete with private media for news stories and reporting talent, and TVNZ already competes for advertising dollars. The new entity will be less commercial, the radio arm is promised to remain non-commercial, and the whole thing will be spending its enlarged “cost base” on the niche public media that private media don’t touch. The scaremongering is half-baked in my view, or perhaps just half-explained.

Last Thursday was a very weird day for the TVNZ-RNZ merger. Pictured: minister of broadcasting Willie Jackson (Image: Toby Morris)

The third revelation for public media nerds was that NZ On Air funding from next year is being substantially decreased in favour of direct funding to the new entity. This means the NZ On Air funding model will not be used for content that appears on the new entity. That funding will go directly to the entity who will commission their own projects – probably as a mix of internal and external productions, as RNZ and TVNZ does already. So the only real difference is that NZ On Air has been removed from the commissioning process for ANZPM productions.

This makes sense in terms of efficiency, practicality and autonomy for the new entity. NZ On Air has some great people working for it, but structurally it is not the perfect model. To fund public media NZ On Air needs a willing platform to publish the content it funds. So for years, NZ On Air didn’t fund many important television genres like documentaries, prime time current affairs and programmes for diverse audiences because TVNZ and Three would only screen them when no-one was watching telly.

Online platforms are no different. Instead of prime-time it’s the home page that is the precious commercial real estate where public media rarely reaches potential audiences. NZ On Air is still dependent on what the commercial channels/platforms will publish and promote and give prominence to on their home pages. Large commercial media might point to the occasional NZ On Air funded project that does hit the home page or appear in prime-time. But these are few and far between and tend to be investigative journalism – one of a handful of public media types that are commercially successful.

Of course, the Aotearoa New Zealand Public Media Bill is far from perfect. The select committee has a big job fixing loopholes that allow the minister editorial influence over the new entity, defining what functions can be commercial or non-commercial, ensuring oversight of the board and the minister, providing sustainable funding and much more. And there’s uncertainty over whether the $109m for three years includes money that RNZ was already receiving via NZ On Air or is it all new funding.

But the main point that must remain top of mind for the select committee, for the establishment board as it forms the new entity, and for the media minister, is that the key stakeholder in all this is the audience – not advertisers, not the industry, certainly not politicians and not journalists. It is the audience, he tangata he tangata he tangata.

Public media used to be called public service media, which was just too much of a mouthful when you say it a lot in one sentence. But public media retains the same ethos – to provide a service to the public. In this case, that’s all of Aotearoa New Zealand. Unfortunately audiences don’t get a word in or even a moment’s consideration in articles about the ANZPM bill. Hopefully the government has a broader perspective.

Myles Thomas is the chair of Better Public Media. His day job is producing public media content for NZME funded by NZ On Air.

Follow Duncan Greive’s NZ media podcast The Fold on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast provider.