Sky Q makes Sky TV better (and pricier) than ever

Alongside it is the Sky Q Mini box, an even smaller secondary box designed to be hooked up to TVs in bedrooms, kitchens and the like. It won’t need to be physically connected to a satellite dish, but instead streams content from your main Sky Q Silver box.

Then there’s the Sky Q Hub, a brand new broadband router that uses both 5GHz AC Wi-Fi and Powerline physical networking. The latter means it can turn any Sky Q box into a Wi-Fi hotspot, boosting the quality of wireless networking in your home. Probably not a big deal if you live in a small flat, but those with larger abodes might well appreciate it.

But let’s get back to the Sky Q Silver for a moment. Its bevy of tuners means you can watch live TV on three TVs and two tablets around your home simultaneously, all while recording four other channels. Again, not a feature everyone will make use of, but something bigger households might find invaluable.

The Sky Q Silver is also UHD ready, but don’t expect retina-popping 4K programming to be available at launch. Sky says 4K is on the cards, but not until later in 2016.

The final piece of the Sky Q hardware puzzle is a Bluetooth-equipped touch remote, which should be a big improvement over the ageing, inelegant Sky+ remote.

But there’s more to the new system than hardware. There’s a brand new interface and programme guide, which Sky says will improve discovery and search. You’ll be able to save recordings to take away and watch on your tablet or smartphone (a first for Sky). You can pause whatever you’re watching on one of your screens at home, then pick up at the same point on another screen in a different room. There’s app and web support too, so you can access YouTube and Vevo, browse Facebook photos, stream music via Apple AirPlay and doubtless much, much more.

On paper Sky Q sounds like a big, comprehensive and all-encompassing package that wants to tick all your home entertainment boxes. And for people with large homes and families who are already avid users of Sky+ and its recorder, we can see that being the case.

But what of the cord cutters? Millennials who favour a more stripped-down, flexible internet streaming-based approach? People who don’t watch TV in the traditional way, in other words? Sky Q doesn’t really have anything to grab them, it seems – but maybe it’s not supposed to. Sky’s Now TV service is going nowhere, so they’ll still be able to watch sport, movies and box sets through that.

We also don’t know how much Sky Q is going to cost. Sky says pricing will be announced closer to its early 2016 launch but, were we to guess, we’d say you can expect it to be quite a bit higher than current Sky+ prices. Some would say that Sky+ already costs too much, so we’re very interested to see what Sky does here. Sky+ will remain an option even after Sky Q’s arrival, by the looks of it, so it could be that Sky+ gets a price cut and Sky Q slots in at current prices. We’ll let you know more when Sky releases the details.