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Sky has rolled-out a transformative upgrade to Sky Glass owners and Sky Stream viewers that promises to fix the biggest headache when watching live events on Sky Sports. For the first time, Glass and Stream subscribers will enjoy low-latency livestreams on the Sky Sports Main Event channel.
The new feature, which remains optional for now, slashes the latency by 22-seconds — cutting the delay between something happening on the pitch and it being streamed on your screen at home to just 8-seconds. That means watching via a broadband connection on Sky Stream and Sky Glass, sports fans will see "give or take" the same delay as satellite broadcasts on Sky Q or Sky+ HD, the company told GB News at its headquarters earlier this year.
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Sky Sports Main Event will see the pioneering new technology before any other channel, dropping the delay from roughly 30-seconds down to 8-seconds between the action taking place in the stadium and showing on your screen at home
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The drop from 30-seconds to 8-seconds means you'll no longer hear neighbours watching via satellite or listening on the radio cheering for a goal over 22-seconds before you see the same action on-screen. It should bring an end to spoilers from the notifications about the latest score pinging on your smartphone.
Best of all? The dramatic drop in latency will work across live broadcasts in Ultra HD and HD.
If you want to start watching these low-latency broadcasts on your Sky Stream or Sky Glass hardware, there are a few ways to get started. First up, you can tune into Sky Sports Main Event as usual, then opt-in using the Live Sync button that appears on-screen.
When watching Sky Sports Main Event on Sky Stream or Sky Glass, you should see a new button "Live Sync" that will reduce the broadcast delay by 22-seconds down to just 8-seconds — the same as satellite TV
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You can also navigate directly to the dedicated low-latency channels in the TV Guide on Glass and Stream by switching to Channel 921 for High Definition (HD) and Channel 922 for Ultra HD (4K) broadcasts.
And finally, you can use the voice search feature built into your remote by saying "Sky Sports Main Event Low Latency" or "Sky Sports Main Event Live Sync". Those with a Sky Glass can use voice commands handsfree too.
GB News first learned about the introduction of low-latency broadcasts to streaming products from Sky TV back in April. The planned release date has taken a little longer to materalise than expected, but with the Premier League season well underway, this should be a game-changing upgrade for Sky Sports subscribers.
While this feature is limited to Sky Sports Main Event for now, Sky TV has ambitions to roll-out low-latency across its Sky Sports portfolio soon. Unfortunately, since this is a proprietary technology developed by Sky TV to work with its systems — the UK broadcaster is in the unique position of operating cameras in the biggest stadiums and owning a popular television platform with a strong focus on sports content — there won't be any improvement to the delay when watching live sports coverage on the BBC, ITV, DAZN, or TNT Sports.
Sky Glass is an all-in-one Smart TV that combines a QLED panel, Dolby Atmos-certified soundbar, and everything you need to watch live Sky TV channels and on-demand content via an internet connection
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We can only hope that Sky shares some of its learnings to improve the latency with these broadcasters. But for the time being, any events shown on these rival channels will be subject to the same delays compared with radio and satellite broadcasts. Nevertheless, it's incredible progress.
The latency from streaming is a function of how this broadcast method works. Cameras capture the footage as it happens, but these files are converted into a format that can be sent hundreds of miles across the internet — a process that takes a few seconds.
The video footage is replicated in several different picture qualities so that it can be shown on different internet connection speeds without pausing to buffer.
These copies are deployed across servers all over the UK. In your home, Sky Stream or Sky Glass will send a request for the series of files, each just a few seconds long, to load up and play on-screen. Each of these steps introduces a short delay, which is compounded across the pipeline.
In most cases, your device will wait until it has a few chunks of completed video before it starts showing anything on-screen — this is to ensure the finished product appears like a consistent stream, rather than footage stopping and starting every few seconds with a buffer animation as it waits for the next file.
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Industry research has shown that viewers prefer to suffer with latency to guarantee a more consistent experience, instead of the feed cutting out momentarily due to a failure or delay somewhere in the chain.
Nevertheless, Sky Stream and Sky Glass subscribers have taken to the Sky Help forums to bemoan the delays. There are numerous threads with disgruntled viewers complaining about the amount of lag, one example reads: "I was watching champions league football on bt sports and when I checked my app on my phone to see what minute the match was in my sky stream box was 1 Minute and 30 seconds behind"
With the efficiencies pioneered by this new pipeline from Sky Sports on Glass and Stream, viewers will no longer have to choose between the two. If you're still watching on satellite dish-powered boxes from Sky TV, like Sky Q and Sky+ HD, then you've already been watching with the lower 8-second delay.
