Sky reveals biggest free upgrade of the year – it’s coming to TVs soon

As you can read in our full Sky Glass review, this clever connected TV – that lets users watch content via a broadband connection – is very good but definitely not perfect. Sky is now hoping that its next big batch of updates will help fix some of the original gripes and having had an exclusive first look at what’s coming before the end of the year, Express.co.uk can reveal that this television is getting a major overhaul.

Perhaps the biggest change that’s launching soon is an overhaul to the Playlists feature which should make things far more intuitive to use. Because Sky Glass doesn’t have a physical hard disk tucked inside, Sky uses the Playlists function to store any recordings on the virtual cloud and via catch-up players.

It’s a clever part of Glass but it’s always had one huge irritation since launch. If you add a programme such as Gogglebox to your Playlist, Sky Glass shows every episode from the entire series in the carousel.

That’s not a problem apart from the fact that the very first episode is always shown first. That means scrolling through years of content to get to the very latest release of the popular series.

Luckily, things are now about to change with Sky unveiling its new Playlists menu that features a rail which will be ordered by most recent. To help users get to things faster, there will also be a new section in Playlists called ‘Most Recent’ which will show anything you’ve just been watching.

READ MORE: The Sky TV upgrade that many have been waiting for finally arrives today

Another way that Glass users will get to things a lot quicker is an update to the home screen with Sky also adding a Continue Watching option. Sky hopes this will make it even easier to jump to what users were last watching, whether it’s the latest thriller or last episode of a soap.

The next change will be welcomed by anyone with a busy household as Sky has also announced the upcoming launch of Personalised lists. When you switch on Sky Glass, you’ll be able to choose your profile and make it your own with dedicated recommendations then being shown on the screen. It basically means that parents won’t be bombarded by cartoons when they settle down for an evening’s viewing and kids won’t be shown anything that might be inappropriate

If you thought these changes were good there’s even more good news with Sky also boosting the visuals via a new Vivid Mode in the ‘Options’ menu. This makes things appear far more punchy and rich with colour.

The firm is also rolling out an update to local dimming on the display to provide higher contrast and brightness. Having seen this in action we can confirm it looks way better than when Sky first launched. Sky says that these picture quality updates will benefit the complete viewing experience on Sky Glass across live, on demand and all apps.

Finally, there are two more useful updgrades including being able to find the remote by simply saying “Hello Sky, where’s my remote” and Bluetooth connectivity is being added so users will able to watch TV whilst wearing headphones.

All of these upgrades should arrive before Christmas so watch this space.