Sky Q, Sky Stream or Sky Glass: do you still need a dish?

For years, Sky meant a dish on the wall. That has changed: most new Sky customers are now offered Sky Stream or Sky Glass, which arrive over broadband and leave the wall bare. So is your dish still worth keeping?

The three options in plain English

• Sky Q uses a satellite dish. The main box records to its own hard drive, and Mini boxes can share it in other rooms. Sky has renewed its satellite contract, so broadcasts continue until 2029 at the earliest.
• Sky Stream is a small streaming box, or puck, that plugs into any TV. Recordings are kept online, and it needs a steady broadband connection.
• Sky Glass is a TV with Sky built in. Like Stream, it works over broadband with no dish.

When a dish still makes sense

If your broadband is slow or unreliable, a dish is still the steadier way to watch. Satellite doesn’t buffer when someone starts a big download, and it isn’t affected by how many people in the house are online. It’s also handy if you want lots of recordings stored at home rather than online.

When streaming is the better choice

With good broadband, Sky Stream and Glass are simpler: no dish on the wall, and extra rooms only need another puck. The one thing that makes the biggest difference is a wired connection to each TV, because Wi-Fi is where most streaming problems start.

Switching from Sky Q? You don’t have to take the dish down straight away. Many people keep it for Freesat, which uses the same satellites and has no monthly bill.

How we can help

We’re independent of Sky. We look after Sky Q dishes, add rooms and fix faults. For Stream and Glass, we run network cables to your TVs and fix Wi-Fi dead spots. See our Sky installation page for more.