SkyQ might be aimed at the silver surfers

Sky has decided to take an old school approach with the imminent launch of its premium Sky Q service. Generally Sky has been on the right side of all the big decisions and the timing of those decisions (going digital / HD / Sky Plus etc etc) but this one is quite a big call.

Essentially Sky has gone for lots of local storage & multiple tuners in the home with the ability to play that locally stored content on multiple devices in the house (and out of it where content can be sideloaded).

This appears to be going in the opposite direction to many of the web based services such as Amazon Prime and NetFlix who look to relying on very lite Apps and Dongles to get the content into the home and are more reliant on high speed connectivity into the home with centralized technology. Interestingly it also does not seem Sky have a desire to develop the Now TV proposition into a premium service which might have been expected.

One explanation might be demographics. Sky Q is possibly aimed at those over about 40 who are not digital natives but are generally more affluent. This group have probably never visited a torrent site or heard of CricFree. Now TV on the other hand goes head to head with the pirates and is targeted at a generation who are well aware nothing is exclusive.

If the above is correct how many of this older Sky Q group would want to watch TV on a tablet or phone or record 5 programmes at once ?

With BT launching 4K and the young challengers NetFlix and Amazon hot on their heels Sky appear keen to be seen to be innovating and if past performance is a guide to future performance this should be a success.