Sky Glass puts all the best features of Sky TV into a real TV, without the need for a satellite dish or set-top box. It does a great job of presenting a plethora of quality TV shows and movies with great features like built-in Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos sound.
But there are a few settings you can tweak to make the viewing experience more immersive, as well as some general tips that can help you make the most of the many streaming services and viewing options that Sky Glass TV has to offer. .
Here are our best tips and tricks for making Sky Glass sing.
Disable auto backlight
This is absolutely the first thing to do after setting up your Sky Glass TV for the first time. Automatic backlight adjustment, in theory, is a good thing: it adapts the brightness of the backlight to be as comfortable as possible for your eyes, depending on the ambient lighting conditions.
However, the automatic backlight control in Sky Glass feels too aggressive, making images look dim by reducing the intensity of the backlight too often. We suggest turning it off completely and manually adjusting the backlight dial to a dim level that matches the TV environment. Remember that you may want to adjust this a bit between day and night, depending on how bright your room is.
Consider a "Custom" display mode
Sky Glass has some great picture presets out of the box, which Sky calls "Display Modes". There's an entertainment option with more oomph for TV shows, a movie option for a warmer, more cinematic effect, a sports option for better motion handling and a bluer color temperature, various options for different audio scenarios. (including "Party" mode), and an "Auto" option that will do its best to cycle through these presets for proper tuning based on the type of content the TV identifies.
However, we think you can get a better overall picture of Sky Glass by manually setting the 'Custom' option in the display mode settings, the only adjustable option for TV buffs.
This is what we suggest you change. Using film mode as a baseline and making sure you have made the backlight adjustment above, make the following adjustments: Acuity: 0, Video brightness: 50, color saturation: 55, Tint / tint: 50, Contrast: 50, Color temperature: Standard (D65).
Together Dolby Vision fashion for Dark for most of the sharpest image display, especially if you have a dark viewing room, although if you're in a well-lit room you can better appreciate the HDR effect from the Bright adjustment. Remember that the Bright option is less accurate than the accepted Dolby Vision standard.
The sharpening here makes the biggest difference: you'll artificially add noise to an image, and given the assumption here is that you'll be watching native 4K content most of the time, you'll get a naturally sharp image, without which you can introduce the sharpness of the "halo" effect. .
Of course, personal preference comes into play here too, so feel free to play around with our preset to find something that suits your eyes best. But these are the closest to what we think is an accurate movie-quality setup.
Make UHD streaming quality your default
You just bought a streaming-based 4K TV. So we'll assume that as long as your internet connection is up to date, you'll want to stream as much of the TV you watch as possible in ultra HD resolution. Out of the box, Sky Glass has a default "Auto" resolution setting for streaming which should capture 4K content for the most part. But to make sure you don't miss a thing, make UHD streaming quality the default.
Press the Home button and scroll down to Settings, or press the Microphone button and say "Settings" to your TV. Then go to Picture & Sound > Picture > Default Streaming Format and change the option to "UHD".
Connect to all your streaming apps for better recommendations
Sky Glass will regularly bring you new things to watch and, like Sky Q before it, its recommendation system is pretty smart. In addition to pulling shows and movies from the genres you love the most, automatically learning your preferences, it also intelligently suggests things based on the time of day. It's unlikely you'll want to watch The Exorcist over breakfast.
However, you may not get the full range of what the TV can suggest without first connecting to the streaming service's apps available on the TV. These include Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney Plus, and Apple TV Plus. If you're a subscriber, the sooner you sign into these apps the better, as Sky will use them to better personalize your viewing recommendations and display your content on the main Sky interface, outside of individual apps.
Once you're signed in, you'll also be able to add content from these services to your global Sky Glass playlist, creating a centralized repository for all the shows and movies you want to watch in one place. Unfortunately, at this time, you can only add shows from the streaming service to a playlist if they appear as a recommendation in the main Sky Glass interface, not from within the apps themselves. Hopefully this option will be added to Sky Glass in a future update.
learn voice commands
Even with an Amazon Echo in your home, it still feels a little weird talking to a TV, even though many today offer some form of voice control. However, the Sky Glass interface excels with voice commands and feels genuinely designed with its use in mind. So try to start getting comfortable chatting with your TV.
When using the "Hello Darling"Wake Phrase, you can ask the TV to do all kinds of things, from playback controls and volume adjustments, to more advanced things like finding all the movies and TV shows with a Hollywood star. Based on our tests, the TV is accurate at deciphering words and intelligently discerns responses from the content it displays.
There's a lot going on in the Sky Glass interface, and as such, finding specific features can take a lot of clicking through recommendation panels and settings pages. But if you know exactly what you're looking for, a quick "Hello Sky" command can take you to a specific page in the interface in no time. It's particularly useful for accessing your playlist, for example (which unfortunately doesn't have a dedicated remote button) or switching between external sources connected to the TV (another command missing from the TV remote). The TV has a built-in microphone to pick up your spoken words, but if your room is large or your friends watching are noisy, you can press and hold the microphone button on the remote to activate the built-in microphone for close-up monitoring. .
There are still areas where voice control is lacking; for example, you can't ask the TV to press 'play' on a list of programs in the menus. But the reach of voice control is likely to expand for months and years, and learning some of the shortcuts can make navigating the interface faster.