Sky to Introduce Cloud Viewing – Project Ethan

Sky are beginning to feel behind the times when it comes to their set-top boxes, especially now they have to compete with companies like Amazon and Apple; so much so that they are set to launch a new box in up to two years.

Dubbed Project Ethan, Sky is planning to completely revamp their set-top boxes so it allows customer to save their favourite shows to the Cloud service rather than directly to the hard drive of the box.  This enables customers to pause a film at home and then resume viewing while on the move, or just on a different device, such as a phone or tablet.

The new box is reported to be a newer sibling of the Sky+ box already in circulation. Project Ethan sounds pretty similar to Sky Go, but it’s probable that it will have a bucket load more features; All to try and entice and prevent those swaying customers from ditching Sky and heading to Google, Amazon or Apple.

As well as plans for a new set-top box, Sky are also planning on introducing 4K viewing (a.k.a. Ultra HD) as the number of 4k compatible TV’s and devices becomes greater and more easily accessible to the public.

No doubt this new service will require faster internet speeds and capabilities, so it’s lucky that Sky just so happened to team up with TalkTalk and have future plans to lay down fibre optic cabling of their own.

Pocket-Lint contacted Sky about their endeavours and were told: “Innovation is at the heart of our business. We are always looking at ways to enhance our service to customers, as with the launch of our new EPG home page this month.”