[SirCoolbeans]

I know quite a few people on here are using Sky GO to watch F1 (both linked to their Sky TV account and the £35 monthly online only ticket).

We are now two races into the season and I thought we could share our experiences.

It’s a great idea and something I feel Sky should embrace a little more than they have so far. It’s been great to watch F1 without requiring a dish to be installed. I rent a flat and have found Sky GO to be my only option.

I’ve used Sky GO in the past at a previous address and with a 50mb internet connection. It rarely streamed well and struggled in both streaming speed and picture quality, especially when compared to other streaming services. I had heard the 50mb Virgin cable lines suffered when streaming content and that caused lots of buffering. I did not have the problem with iPlayer and other such services. So I eventually got frustrated and cancelled my Sky GO monthly ticket.

I’ve since moved and with F1 going live on Sky I decided to give it another shot.

I’m now on a 20mb ADSL line, of which I get a near consistent 15mb speed. The quality of picture and streaming on Sky GO is still lacking. When watching F1 the image jumps around quite a bit and there is obviously a minute or so delay. The audio often gets out of sync.

The thing is their sample channel which is used to entice you into Sky GO has fantastic quality streaming and is near perfect, but once you’ve paid the rest of the channels behind the pay wall drop off in quality and stream poorly.

It’s a shame the user interface is clunky as well. I’d love them to improve the service.

That’s my experience anyway. I have a feeling Sky have set out to limit Sky GO.

[Keith Collantine]

It works alright for me though like you say it’s very clunky and a few seconds behind the live feed.

I don’t trust the device recognition thing, I bet that’s going to stop me from using it at some point.

I hoped I could use it to keep an eye on one of the Red Button feeds during the race, but no such luck – you can only watch the main broadcast it seems. If anyone knows differently please let me know!

I also had it on during the IndyCar. It wouldn’t work properly at first and you had to do the strange dodge of going to ESPN Classic and moving on one channel to get the live feed.

It dropped out once or twice but usually came back with a refresh and the quality was pretty good.

It’s OK on the whole, but nowhere near as good as the BBC’s. Which, given the cost of anything Sky-related, leaves them lagging a long way behind.

[robk23]

I find Sky Go only lasts about 15 minutes before it stops working, I usually have to close the browser, log in again and hope that it’s working. It usually comes up with an error message when it happens, my internet connection is fine as iPlayer works fine usually without buffering at all. Luckily I only watch on Sky Go if someone else is watching the TV.

[Mathers]

@keithcollantine I believe you can watch all of the Red Button stuff on this link here: http://www1.skysports.com/formula1/racecontrol/

I am not certain as I have never used it in the race, but doing my daily trawl of the F1 news I found it.

But back on topic, I really like Sky Go. I used it to watch the Indycar race in St Petersburg, and I thought the quality was good on my 2mb internet connection. I forced it to High quality and it never stopped to buffer, so I was impressed. Also, another way to get to channel 499 (Sky Sports Xtra) on Sky GO is to go to this page: http://www.skysports.com/video/tv/0,25316,7,00.html

It shows most if not all of the items that Sky Sports put behind the Red Button on their channels, at the moment there is Football from Spain on (Surprise Surprise!)

[rs456]

There are two problems with Sky Go. If you search for the GP Highlights it takes you to a page that immediately tells you who has won the race. Not exactly what you want… And then when you do find the video of the Highlights you find it’s only 10 minutes long…(or – in the case of the Australian Gp 1min 7 secs!)

Sky should quickly edit a highlights programme of at least 1 hr duration (as the BBC does) and they should post the link to that directly on the Sky Go Home page.

[Asanator]

IT is good in the fact that I get to watch the practice sessions live at work. But poor if I miss a session and want to re-watch it. It isn’t Video on Demand like iplayer, it is just an online channel! In fact it is massively disappointing after iplayer!

[robinrhysjones]

I use it on my Xbox 360 and it’s fantastic! Good quality, no dropouts, and only on a 6Mbps connection!

[jamessalt]

I’ve watched both races on the IPad App for Sky-Go. I’ve not had any problems what so ever. Picture quality is good and the sound is excellent (Through earphones)

The SkySports F1 Companion App is also a must…

[Katia]

Today, a month after I purchased my first sky go ticket in order to watch Australia and Malaysia GPs, Sky has charged my credit card with £35! To be honest I wanted to wait until the very last minute to buy a ticket to watch Bahrain as I may also be out of the country at the weekend due to my job. And not an email alert on sight about this! I suppose I had to un-check some box or tell them I didn’t want to renew it anymore. Did I misread the T&Cs somewhere? Possible.
Sky for me is more and more a loathed necessity.

[sozavele]

£35! I am surprised they can charge that much, I personally want Sky F1 but can’t afford it, I am pretty confident the cheapest method is Sky – £20 and HD – £10, totalling £30, which if you only want F1 the standard channels but no sport, that is the cheaper method.

[spike]

I also use it on my Xbox 360 and have found it Good quality with no dropouts, I also only have a 6Mbps connection.

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