Sky Q: Sky moves into the future with its new 'premium' subscription service

Sky's new 'premium' subscription service is arguably the biggest step forward for the company since Sky+ was launched

The Sky Q box also comes with a flashy new remote (David Parry/PA Wire)

In a wide-ranging presentation of new boxes, features and technologies, Sky has announced its biggest development in years. Sky Q is the name of the new service, which will become available early next year. It is arguably the biggest step forward for the company since the launch of Sky+.

It promises multiple ways to watch live TV shows and recordings, with more features like voice search and UHD broadcasts – the super-high resolution also known as 4K – to follow after launch.

Sky Q is what the company is calling a premium service, so expect a bump in subscription fees if you want the extra features it promises. The company is keeping mum about the prices for now but expect perhaps an extra £10 or £20 a month on top of current rates.

That’s not cheap, so what does the new service offer? First, there’s the new Sky Q box, with a 2TB hard drive. That’s what the current premium Sky+ HD box has, though this new one is much smaller. And instead of the two tuners inside, this one will have 12. The point of the extra tuners is you need one per channel viewable at a time. As a result, installation of the Sky Q box will require not a new dish but a new component for the existing dish.

Those extra tuners are there to allow multiple TVs to watch or record live channels at the same time. You’ll be able to record four shows simultaneously while you watch a fifth. Well, it’s occasionally possible to find three shows on at the same time that you want to see, but five might be pushing it.

Sky Q goes further is you add a second box. The even smaller box is called Sky Q Mini and is the first that doesn’t have to be directly connected to your satellite dish. While you can currently watch live channels in different rooms with Sky Multiroom, the TVs need to have cable connections to your dish. And recordings on the Sky+ hard drive can only be watched on one TV. All that changes with Sky Q: you’ll be able to pause viewing live TV or a recording on one box and start watching from the same point on another. You can also, for the first time, save your recordings to a tablet as well, so you can watch them outside the house. These are all part of what Sky’s calling Fluid Viewing. This isn’t limited to just two TVs – you can watch on up to five screens simultaneously.

It's not yet clear how much more a Sky Q subscription will cost compared to the regular service (David Parry/PA Wire)

Sky Q will also solve broadband problems for some households as well, since each box works as a wi-fi hotspot. This will a real boon for many.

There’s a new TV guide which is radically different from current offerings, responding to the app-based style found on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV and Sky’s own NOW TV. Again, there’s a firm emphasis on recordings which are now viewable according to whether they’re recent, favourite or as an alphabetical list. A new remote with a swipeable touchpad will also be launched and though voice control wasn’t demonstrated at the event, it’s promised to arrive next year.

Sky’s track record is one of extensive innovation, from the arrival of Sky+ which quickly became the most used programme recording system to the introduction of multiple HD channels. So hopes are high that when it deploys UHD, some time next year, that it will do that right, too. Sky has said this won’t come when the boxes launch because it’s waiting until there’s enough content for it to be done properly.

Sky Q has a lot of new features, so many that explaining them may be a challenge for a company which prides itself on communicating its messages simply. And there are features which will simply offer too much to some households, especially smaller ones. But the prospect of true multiroom viewing, recordings you can take anywhere and soon UHD broadcasts may be enough to put Sky ahead of its competitors by a distance.