Originally Posted by Which?

Sky has shown off its latest video-on-demand service, Sky Anytime+, which the broadcaster says will launch later this year.

The service will allow Sky TV and broadband customers access to a library of content over an internet connection to watch on their TVs. Sky states that Movies, Sport, Art programmes, Sky1 programmes and content from third party channels will be available.

New Sky EPG for Sky Anytime+

The content can be selected through a newly-designed electronic programme guide (EPG) and is downloaded to the user's Sky+ box. The progressive downloading means that a typical 1.3GB film should be available to start watching on your TV after a minute over a 2Mps or faster connection, or after 40 minutes on a 1Mbps connection.

Find out how well the Sky+ box fared in our Sky and Sky HD box reviews

The new EPG has thumbnail images of the content and has a new menu for downloading content. Several programmes can be queued to download, and the queuing order can be re-prioritised. All downloads can be paused, if the user wants to free up broadband bandwidth so the downloads don't slow down other broadband activities, and then resumed.

Once the content has been downloaded it will be saved on the customer's Sky+ box until deleted.

Wireless or hard-lined internet connection

Sky explains that the box can be connected to the internet by an ethernet cable or by a wireless adaptor, which can be set up by a Sky engineer or by the user.

You must be a Sky TV and Sky Broadband customer to access Sky Anytime+.

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Originally Posted by Digital Spy

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However, a big issue about Anytime+ is that it will initially only be made available to Sky customers with a Sky Broadband connection, meaning anyone on another internet service provider will miss out. Downward said that the reasoning behind this strategy is to enable the "optimum experience" for customers and make it easier to manage technical issues.

"If you imagine if something was to go wrong with the experience, then we would be able to diagnose it at a box level and a network level, and resolve the problem for the customers," she said. "If they were on another ISP, then we would be able to diagnose some of the problem but we would have to hand that customer off to another ISP to sort out the network issues. Until we can be confident that we can deliver a really great end-to-end customer experience, we want to just keep it on the Sky Broadband network."

Among internet service providers, there is an ongoing battle for 'triple play' customers taking a combined package of broadband, TV and landline. Restricting Anytime+ to Sky Broadband subscribers could therefore be viewed as a commercial ploy from Sky.

However, Downward claimed that it is actually about launching a quality service over broadband which Sky can control end-to-end. She also indicated that Sky intends to roll out the service to other ISPs in the future, but that will only occur once the firm is "confident that it will bring the right level of customer experience".

When Sky Player launched on Xbox Live last year, the service was beset with technical problems, due in part to an unexpected level of demand. Sky senior product development manager David Kelly said that one of the main benefits of retaining Anytime+ within Sky Broadband is the ability to optimise the network capacity to ensure that the service is deliverable without issue.

"We have optimised our network so that this service is the best it can be, but another ISP might shape the traffic at primetime, which could mean that content takes longer to stream," said Kelly. "We just want to be able to manage the service before we widen it to other networks. Within our own broadband network, we are more than confident that we can deliver without crashes and so on. We have planned against any major bottle necks on the launch day and we have learnt from past rollouts, so we are very confident that we won't have any major problems."

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Originally Posted by Paul (Post 35033727)

I would expect what they mean is you must be either a TV or ADSL subscriber to access it otherwise you won't have a MySky account to link it all to.

Originally Posted by defirish (Post 35034404)

What does ADSL mean