Sky will soon update its Sky Glass TVs and Sky Stream box with a raft of new features.
The next version of Entertainment OS will also include improvements in latency for Sky Sports coverage and gaming.
Sky has shown T3 a sneak preview of a suite of new features coming to Sky Glass and Sky Stream soon. And, as well as enhance the personalisation options on the shared Entertainment OS platform, the next couple of updates bring great news for gamers and sports fans.
That's because one forthcoming over-the-air software upgrade will include a reduction in the latency for both.
In gaming terms, the Sky Glass television will receive ALLM (Auto Low Latency Mode) support, which will dramatically improve the experience when running games from a connected console. While sports fans will finally find that live events aren't lagging so far behind traditional broadcasts.
At present, Sky Sports on Glass and Stream runs around 30 seconds behind broadcasts, meaning that you could receive a notification about a goal on your mobile, long before seeing it happen on screen. However, that will soon be cut to by 22 seconds, to around 8 seconds of delay. And while that's still not perfect, it's a huge step in the right direction.
It will arrive on the Sky Sports Main Event channel first, in May, then follow onto all other Sky Sports channels in the coming months.
Those are probably the headline new improvements, although there are also several changes that have either just arrived or coming to the general user interface and voice search soon.
More personalisation
One of the new features that has arrived already is greater personalisation – specifically when it comes to films.
That means you should now see rails on the "Movies" hub that are recommendations just for you. These are based on content you've watched already or added to your Playlist. There will also be editorially curated films that are based on your viewing habits, but you might not have considered before.
Personalised rails will also be launched for TV shows soon.
In addition, you can now add avatars as your profile icon. These are limited to kids show characters at present, including SpongeBob, Peppa Pig and Scooby Doo, but famous stars and actors will be coming at a later date, too.
Speaking of which, you can also now see the cast and crew on all show pages, and clicking on them will bring up all their connected content available on Sky or apps.
And, when it comes to voice search, you can now fast forward and rewind content by saying commands like, "Hello Sky, rewind times six". While apps now have been voice interactivity, so you can immediately open an artist's section in a music app, say, by just saying, "Hello Sky, Harry Styles on Amazon Music".
Also coming to voice search soon will be the ability to use voice to add shows and movies to your playlist – thereby eliminating the need to click several different options.
Other new features coming in May
As well as some of the future features detailed above, and the ALLM and low latency sports coverage, other new features planned for May's Entertainment OS 1.3 software update include the ability to follow actors by adding them to your Playlist.
This then ensures you can find the films of Tom Cruise, for example, more easily.
There are also new icons on show and movie pages, replacing the original text-based buttons on screen for a cleaner look. And, as Sky's owner Comcast also owns Rotten Tomatoes, you will see critics and viewer ratings for films on each of their dedicated pages.
The films will also be listed using their title art rather than a stock font.
And finally, accessibility will be improved with subtitles coming to all Ultra HD on demand content (it's already on HD content) by the end of the summer, while audio description will be on video on demand content, too.
All the new features will be free and should download automatically when available.
