Spotify, HDR and thousands of hours of Ultra HD content coming to Sky Q
Big plans for 2018
Sky has announced that from March 2018 it will begin to roll out some big innovations on Sky Q.
Those sitting with a brand new 4K HDR TV and a rapidly depleting 4K Netflix and Amazon library will be glad to know that HDR support is coming to Sky Q along with a lot more Ultra HD content. In fact, the amount of UHD content on the service is set to double this year, meaning there’ll be more than 1000 hours of movies and TV to watch.
It’s also been confirmed that Spotify is making itself at home on yet another device, with an app coming to Sky Q in the spring. Both the free ad-supported and premium subscription versions of the service will be supported and the addition of a third-party music service certainly does make the Sky Q box a more well-rounded entertainment system.
Getting personal
Users will also see a much more personalised experience on Sky Q across the board throughout the year thanks to some improvements in machine learning and algorithms.
Now the user interface will show recommendations based on what you usually watch and what times of day you like to watch it. The service’s voice search has been enhanced to encompass these personalised recommendations. So if, for example, you were to say “show movies for me” it’d be able to show movies that it thinks you might enjoy based on your previous viewings.
Frequent sports watchers will also see the sports section personalised to highlight their favourite sports and teams.
There are plans to introduce a new Kids mode which will make it easier for parents to control what their children are watching, and it’ll soon be possible to stream Sky content to the Sky Q app on more devices at the one time. That means you’ll be able to watch what you want on the TV while the kids can enjoy their curated selection of shows on a tablet.
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All of these changes will start rolling out in spring across the rest of 2018.
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Emma Boyle is TechRadar’s ex-Gaming Editor, and is now a content developer and freelance journalist. She has written for magazines and websites including T3, Stuff and The Independent. Emma currently works as a Content Developer in Edinburgh.