Sky has been hard at work over the past three years, adding over 500 new features to the Sky Glass TV it launched in 2021, and the Sky Stream box that launched a year later. However, it's not done yet, as it had plenty of new features to show us during a quick trip to its Sky Studios campus in Osterley, West London.
Entertainment OS 1.2 – available now
Five new features have been rolled out to the above Sky devices as part of the Entertainment OS 1.2 system update, with more to be included down the line. First and foremost is the personalised presentation of content as part of the Entertainment OS user interface. Within the UI you will now find personalised content rails split into various genres, which will feature content related to things you've previously watched.
We were shown an example of two Sky Glass TVs side by side, one with the upcoming version of Entertainment OS installed and one with the current version; the one with the newer software featured a specified content rail featuring biographical films based on a user watching Ferrari, while the other had a more generic featured content rail. The system recognised the user's interest in the biopic genre and began to show more content within that genre.
Sky says that its editorial team still hand-picks content to feature on these pages, however, it'll be mixed in with user-generated content suggestions based on viewing history. Not only are these rails curated based on your watching history, but Sky also implies that the order of the content is customised, with shows or movies that will appeal to you more showing most prominently on the rail. However, it also stressed that it doesn't want to limit users when it comes to exposing them to new content, so Sky says it will include some "wildcard" suggestions that will push users to look outside of the box, without straying too far from their interests and preferences. The feature is available to try now for movies and it'll launch soon for TV shows.
Next up are the new Show Pages. The new cast and crew rail you'll find underneath the title and information has a new function in that you can click on any name and find a content library of other movies or TV shows they've been in. The example we saw was clicking on Tom Cruise's icon within the Show Page for Top Gun: Maverick revealed a long list of other content that Cruise has starred in, including The Last Samurai and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning.
Playlists are getting a small personalisation upgrade too, with the ability to set avatars for each playlist. You'll be able to set icons for each playlist you have, with Sky rolling out a selection of characters from kids shows such as Scooby Doo, Spongebob Squarepants and Paw Patrol first, and it plans to include actors and sports personalities later down the line.
Finally (for this update at least, more upcoming features are listed below), Sky is expanding how you can interact with your Glass or Stream via voice commands. The "Hey Sky, rewind" function from Sky Q is now available on Sky Glass and Sky Stream, meaning you can either fast forward, rewind or skip to specific moments within your content via a spoken command.
Furthermore, there have been improvements made to navigating the system with voice commands when it comes to finding and playing music. Sky supports using voice commands on two streaming platforms, Amazon Music and Roxi, and it will now allow you to simply say something like "Taylor Swift on Amazon Music" after pressing the voice control button, which will take you directly to the artist's page. Furthermore, pressing the voice control button and saying another artist's name will transport you to said artist's page without leaving the app too.
Entertainment OS 1.3 – coming soon
Sky isn't stopping there, with a handful of new upgrades coming later down the line. Entertainment OS 1.3 is set to launch in May (no official date has been set quite yet), and it is set to bring some major upgrades for sports and gaming fans.
Most excitingly is the addition of ALLM, which will reduce input times when playing games on either the PS5, Xbox Series X or Xbox Series S over HDMI. While the Sky Glass still features a maximum refresh rate of 60Hz and no support for VRR (yet), it's nice to see a feature to make this TV more appealing to gamers using the latest generation consoles. This setting will automatically be applied when you plug a console into Sky Glass and ALLM will be activated via Sky's Auto Game Mode feature.
Furthermore, latency is being reduced in another sense with Sky Sports. Delays have plagued Sky Stream and Glass, something we noted in our reviews for both when it comes to live sports. This sometimes results in frustrating spoilers of goals being scored before we see it on the screen from messages from friends or sports app notifications. Thankfully, Sky is tackling this issue, with an impressive 22-second claimed reduction in latency quoted, which will work with HD and UHD streamed sports.
This will first be trialled with Sky Sports Main Event programming, and Sky plans on bringing this low latency upgrade to more of its sports programming in the near future. Sky also claims that this upgrade will make latency lower than other sports streaming services on the market.
Circling back to Show Pages, Sky is updating these with a few refreshed icons to create a cleaner and slicker interface, as well as adding Rotten Tamato scores within the content description. You'll also be able to use the cast and crew rail on this page to follow actors (and in a following update football teams) and add the shows and/or movies they're in to your playlists. You'll be able to add them to your playlist in the same way as you do with other content, but they'll appear in a dedicated "people you follow" rail within your playlist pages.
Speaking of playlists, you'll soon be able to add content to your playlists with your voice. Just navigate to the show or film you want to add and say the "Hey Sky, add to playlist" command.
Finally, Sky is making a handful of accessibility upgrades with the Sky Glass and Stream, including adding subtitles to all UHD content on its platform. That spans movies and TV shows across Sky's entire catalogue, with audio description also expected to launch on its video on demand platform later down the line.
All features within Entertainment OS 1.2 are available to users now, with the Entertainment OS 1.3 update expected in the coming month.
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