Sky Go is a

streaming television Streaming television is the digital distribution of television content, such as TV shows, as streaming media delivered over the Internet. Streaming television stands in contrast to dedicated terrestrial television delivered by over-the-air a ...

service from

Sky Group Sky Group Limited is a British media and telecommunications conglomerate, which is a division of Comcast, and headquartered in London. It has operations in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Italy. Sky is Europe's ...

provided free for Sky TV subscribers in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

and

Republic of Ireland Ireland ( ga, Éire ), also known as the Republic of Ireland (), is a country in north-western Europe consisting of 26 of the 32 Counties of Ireland, counties of the island of Ireland. The capital and largest city is Dublin, on the eastern ...

, it complements Sky TV by allowing subscribers to watch live and

on demand On-demand or on demand may refer to: Manufacturing * Build-on-demand * Just-in-time manufacturing, a methodology for production * Print on demand, printing technology and business process in which new copies of a document are not printed until an ...

Sky TV via an internet connection on the go. The Sky Go app is available on Windows and Mac computers and also on Android and iOS devices.

Overview

On demand content comprises sports highlights, latest news, movies and TV programmes. Content is viewable for a limited amount of time and is protected by digital rights management software provided by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washin ...

and the

NDS Group Cisco Videoscape (formerly NDS Group and currently known as Synamedia) was a majority owned subsidiary of News Corp, which develops software for the pay TV industry (including cable, satellite and others). NDS Group was established in 1988 as an ...

, and therefore cannot be copied to disc or viewed beyond the date carried by its license. The service is available at no extra cost to existing Sky TV customers, with accessible content depending on the subscriber's Sky package. Non-Sky TV customers can access the service by subscribing on a pay-per-view basis. Sky Go is viewable on up to two devices, with the ability to increase this to four devices with Sky Go Extra for a monthly fee. The now-deprecated

Microsoft Silverlight Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich web applications, similar to Adobe's runtime, Adobe Flash. A plugin for Silverlight is still available for a very small number of browsers. W ...

3.0 browser plug-in is required to play content on computers. Due to viewing rights, certain programmes are not available to watch via Sky Go, and are 'blacked out' from the schedule. To have access to the full selection of live TV channels available on Sky Go, users will need a subscription to the relevant Sky TV packages that correspond to the available channels.

History

It originally launched on 11 January 2006 as Sky by Broadband. On 25 November 2006 Sky announced that Sky By Broadband had been rebranded as Sky Anytime on PC. The rebranding also coincided with an update to the client, which included a new interface and a pay-per-view service for movies and US television shows. On 16 May 2008, Sky Anytime on PC was rebranded as Sky Player, along with updated software to include live simulcasts of Sky News and

Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It ...

. On 29 October 2009, the Sky Player service expanded on to the Xbox 360. An

Xbox Live Gold The Xbox network, formerly and still sometimes branded as Xbox Live, is an Internet, online multiplayer video game, multiplayer gaming and digital media delivery service created and operated by Microsoft. It was first made available to the Xbox ...

subscription is required, and users need to register via the Sky Go website. Features include a party system which allows multiple users to watch content at the same time, with users represented by their Xbox 360 Avatars in a virtual room. Due to the high level of demand, the launch of the service was troublesome and technical issues caused the entire Sky Go platform to become unavailable. To rectify this, Sky decided to open up Sky Go on Xbox 360 to users incrementally over the following days. On 19 November 2009, Sky Player was also made available to

Windows Media Center Windows Media Center (WMC) is a defunct digital video recorder and media player created by Microsoft. Media Center was first introduced to Windows in 2002 on Windows XP Media Center Edition (MCE). It was included in Home Premium and Ultimate ...

-equipped

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, 2009. It is the successor to Windows Vista, released nearly ...

computers. Users of 3G phones on

Vodafone Vodafone Group plc () is a British multinational telecommunications company. Its registered office and global headquarters are in Newbury, Berkshire, England. It predominantly operates services in Asia, Africa, Europe, and Oceania. , Vod ...

Orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower *Orange (colour), from the color of an orange, occurs between red and yellow in the visible spectrum * ...

, and

T-Mobile T-Mobile is the brand name used by some of the mobile communications subsidiaries of the German telecommunications company Deutsche Telekom AG in the Czech Republic ( T-Mobile Czech Republic), Poland ( T-Mobile Polska), the United States (T-Mobil ...

could subscribe to a service called Sky Mobile TV. The service consisted of three packages —-Sky News, Sport and Factual Pack; Sky Entertainment Pack; and Sky Music Pack—-which include a mixture of live and made-for-mobile channels of broadcasters’ channels. Originally Sky Mobile TV launched for 3G

Vodafone live! Vodafone live! was the brand name for the multimedia portal service of mobile phone operator Vodafone, offering news content, picture messaging, instant messaging, email, and downloadable ringtones and games. The service officially launched on 24 O ...

customers in November 2005. The first live football match from Sky Sports was streamed to mobile at the start of the 2007-08 season. On 6 July 2011, Sky Player and Sky Mobile TV services were merged and rebranded as Sky Go. Key changes include the ability to watch live channels in line with your Sky TV subscription at no additional cost, limited to two simultaneous devices. Support for Windows Media Center was dropped, however an app was released for

Apple An apple is an edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus domestica''). Apple fruit tree, trees are agriculture, cultivated worldwide and are the most widely grown species in the genus ''Malus''. The tree originated in Central Asia, wh ...

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

operating system, used on the

iPad The iPad is a brand of iOS and iPadOS-based tablet computers that are developed by Apple Inc. The iPad was conceived before the related iPhone but the iPhone was developed and released first. Speculation about the development, operating ...

, iPhone and iPod Touch. A Sky Go app for Android devices was released on 20 February 2012. Sky Go for Android does not work on rooted phones and was initially only available on a selection of Android phones from

HTC HTC Corporation ( zh, t=宏達國際電子股份有限公司, s=宏达国际电子股份有限公司, p=Hóngdá Guójì Diànzǐ Gǔfèn Yǒuxiàn Gōngsī, first=t) or High Tech Computer Corporation, (literally ''Hongda International Electron ...

and

Samsung The Samsung Group (or simply Samsung) ( ko, 삼성 ) is a South Korean multinational manufacturing conglomerate headquartered in Samsung Town, Seoul, South Korea. It comprises numerous affiliated businesses, most of them united under the ...

. On 11 December 2012, Sky Go added support for

Jelly Bean Jelly beans are small bean shaped sugar candies with soft candy shells and thick gel interiors (see gelatin and jelly). The confection is primarily made of sugar and sold in a wide variety of colors and flavors. History It has been clai ...

and additional devices, including those from

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

, LG and

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

. , Sky Go is not in development for other platforms such as

BlackBerry 10 BlackBerry 10 is a discontinued proprietary mobile operating system for the BlackBerry line of smartphones, both developed by BlackBerry Limited (formerly Research In Motion). BlackBerry 10 is based on QNX, a Unix-like operating system that was ...

Windows Phone 8 Windows Phone 8 is the second generation of the Windows Phone mobile operating system from Microsoft. It was released on October 29, 2012, and, like its predecessor, it features a flat user interface based on the Metro design language. It was s ...

Windows RT Windows RT is a mobile operating system developed by Microsoft. It is a version of Windows 8 or Windows 8.1 built for the 32-bit ARM architecture (ARMv7). First unveiled in January 2011 at Consumer Electronics Show, the Windows RT 8 operat ...

, as Sky believes that the market is too small to justify the cost of development. On 22 January 2013, a download service called Sky Go Extra was added, allowing up to four users to download content to their computers, smartphones and tablets to view offline for an additional monthly fee. The download feature was previously available for free in the Sky Go Desktop client. On 1 May 2014, Sky announced the

PlayStation 3 The PlayStation 3 (PS3) is a home video game console developed by Sony Computer Entertainment. The successor to the PlayStation 2, it is part of the PlayStation brand of consoles. It was first released on November 11, 2006, in Japan, November ...

and PlayStation 4 will be receiving Sky Go by the end of 2014. The PlayStation 4 received the service on 3 December 2014, through an application named "TV from Sky" and on 29 January 2015 Sky launched this application on the

.Rik Henderson
Sky Go now available for PS3 owners too, TV from Sky app in PlayStation Store
pocket-lint.com, January, 2015. Since 2019,

Sky Mobile Sky UK Limited is a British broadcaster and telecommunications company that provides television and broadband Internet services, fixed line and mobile telephone services to consumers and businesses in the United Kingdom. It is a subsidiary of ...

customers can use Sky Go including

Sky Cinema Sky Cinema is a British subscription film service owned by Sky Group (a division of Comcast). In the United Kingdom, Sky Cinema channels currently broadcast on the Sky satellite and Virgin Media cable platforms, and in addition Sky Cinema o ...

and

without a mobile data charge.

International versions

Separate Sky Go services are also operated by

Sky Italia Sky Italia S.r.l. is an Italian satellite television platform owned by the American media conglomerate Comcast. Sky Italia also broadcasts three national free-to-air television channels: TV8, Cielo and Sky TG24. As of 2018, following an ag ...

and

Sky Deutschland Sky Deutschland GmbH, branded as Sky, is a German media company that operates a direct broadcast satellite Pay TV platform in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (through Sky Switzerland). It provides a collection of basic and premium digital sub ...

References

External links

Sky Go
{{VOD services Direct broadcast satellite services Video on demand services Sky Group