Sky is changing the way you watch TV …and we tested it

Sky Live is an intriguing proposition. It’s also a little eclectic.

One minute you could be playing family-friendly games – reminiscent of Wii Sports or Xbox Kinect – by waving your arms around in front of the telly, while the next, you’ll be listening to precise feedback on your squat technique in the Mvmnt app.

For those who work from home, Sky Live can transform your living room into a studio for Zoom calls. And the Watch Together features, which houses group video calls in the right hand-side of the screen and synchronises playback of your favourite show, match or movie, could easily kill-off our dedicated Love Island discussion groups on WhatsApp.

Testing some of these experiences ahead of the launch of Sky Live, everything works as advertised.

Without a separate console or controller, we were able to slice through pineapples and pears in a frantic game of Fruit Ninja, play Monopoly on the big screen against friends or family scattered across the world joining with the iPhone or iPad app, and jump to splatter mud around with the Peppa Pig characters. Sure, nobody is going to trade-in their Xbox Series X for Sky Live, but these family-friendly gesture-controlled experiences provide a fun time that’s reminiscent of Wii Sports.

Watch Together could be truly transformative …provided all of your friends and family already own Sky Glass.

Although it’s worth noting that content that’s only available as part of Sky Cinema and Sky Sports won’t be shared with anyone on the call who doesn’t pay for these optional extras. Instead of the latest Spider-Man film or nail-biting F1, these participants will be presented with a prompt to add the missing bundle to their monthly bill. That’s probably inevitable, thanks to the reams of legal paperwork that must’ve been typed to get this project off-the-ground.

If you know a couple of people with Sky Glass and don’t live close enough for you to host a Love Island or Ashes party in-person, this is easily the best experience of remotely watching a show together we’ve ever seen.

But for now, the group of people who will be able to enjoy that peerless experience seems pretty small. Unfortunately, shows and films from Netflix, Disney Plus, and other streaming services on Sky Glass won’t be supported at launch.

In our brief demo with the Zoom app, the call quality was superb and the automatic framing worked a treat – even as new people entered the room, people jumped between seats, and the light conditions changed. Zoom is definitely more of an enterprise app, so it would be nice to see support for Facebook Messenger or WhatsApp in the future. But those with a Sky Glass telly in their home office – or who work from the sofa – can expect a superb upgrade.

Lastly, Mvmnt is easily the best advert for Sky Live. The ability to offer feedback on your form is something we haven’t seen from any of the other major at-home coaching services. It’s truly transformative and means you won’t find yourself making common mistakes and potentially doing more harm than good when working at from home.

With 130 workouts at launch, it remains to be seen how quickly the team at Mvmnt add new training plans, exercises and classes. That’s going to be essential to keep those who want to make this app part of their daily routine invested in their fitness.

Given that Sky Glass owners need to pay £5 extra each month to be able to fast-forward through adverts in on-demand shows from ITVX and All4, the £6 per month charge for Sky Live and all of the experiences listed above seems like mind-blowing value. Sky has suggested that it might launch new subscription tiers in the future, so that value-for-money could take a hit if Mvmnt requires a separate subscription in-line with what we see from Apple Fitness+ and Peloton (between £9.99 and £19.99 each month).

If you’re intrigued by at least two of the four main categories of the Sky Live experience, then it’s definitely worth a look.