In a rather unusual service outage, some of Sky UK’s customers are suffering from a serious and ongoing issue that is preventing them from being able to switch-on their broadband-based Sky Glass and Sky Stream pay TV streaming devices. We can’t say we’ve ever heard of many issues quite like this one before, but hopefully the devices can be remotely recovered.
The bulk of complaints about this most bizarre of faults began to surface just before 5pm yesterday and more issues started to be reported as the night rolled on, but sadly they’re continuing to come in this morning. The reports also suggest that the issue can be quite sporadic, with some customers who own multiple ‘pucks’ (Sky Stream boxes) and Sky Glass TV sets saying that some work, while others do not.
Some customers report that their devices have since returned to normal, while many others are continuing to suffer the same problem and seeing flashing red or white lights as their devices attempt to start. The fact that this issue seemed to gradually grow last night suggests, at least to us, that Sky could have been trying to push a firmware or configuration update of some sort at the time of the incident.
Sky soon acknowledged the issue, but there is frustration that the operator hasn’t published any further updates since late yesterday afternoon. Sky’s website currently states (here): “Some Sky Glass/Stream customers are currently experiencing technical issues when trying to switch on their devices. Our technical teams are working hard to fix this. We’re sorry for any inconvenience caused and remember you can watch on Sky Go right now.”
A few customers have had some luck by unplugging their devices for 10 minutes and then re-connecting them, while others found that holding the power button down for several seconds (likely initiating a reset) worked and enabled them to re-activate their Sky Glass devices online. But others have not been so lucky and the Sky Community Forum is chocked full of complaints, suggesting this may be impacting a lot of people.
UPDATE 8:33am
We’ve seen some indications that similar devices in some of Sky’s other European outlets are suffering from the same issue, but this is not yet confirmed.
UPDATE 8:52am
For customer who want to try and recover / reset their pucks (Sky Stream), the procedure is as follows (this works for some but not others).
Reset / Recover Sky Stream Puck
1. Switch off the Sky Stream puck at the mains plug socket.
2. Press and hold the Standby button on the bottom of the Sky Stream puck.
3. Keeping your finger on the button (underneath the puck), switch the power back on at the mains and wait until you see the LED lights flash amber then green, then remove your finger.
4. Let the Sky Stream puck complete the recovery process. This can take up to 15 minutes (may depend on your broadband speed).
5. Switch the Sky Stream puck back on and follow the on-screen steps to set it up. You might need to go to www.sky.com/activate for further steps.
Similarly, some of those with Sky Glass found that this reset worked, but again it doesn’t for everybody.
Reset / Recover Sky Glass TV
1. Switch off your TV at the mains again. There’s no need to unplug it.
2. Press and hold the Standby button on the right-hand side of the TV.
3. Keeping your finger on the button, switch the power back on at the mains and wait until you see the LED lights flash (this could take 20 seconds before the LED starts flashing), then remove your finger.
4. Let the Sky Glass TV complete the recovery process. This can take up to 15 minutes, depending on your broadband speed.
5. Switch the TV back on and follow the steps on screen to set up your TV.
UPDATE 9:06am
Sky has just updated the Service Status message on their website, which now also pushes advice to use the reset procedure (as above).
Sky Status Update – 08:58 AM
Some Sky Glass and Sky Stream customers are currently experiencing technical issues when trying to switch on their devices. Our engineers are working hard to fix this. In the meantime please visit the links below and follow the process listed in order to restore your device. Sky Glass https://www.sky.com/help/expert/articles/power-issue-help-sky-glass Sky Stream https://www.sky.com/help/expert/articles/power-issue-help-sky-glass-sky-stream-puck We are sorry for any inconvenience caused and remember you can watch on Sky Go right now.
Sky has yet to respond to our comment request, but when they do it’ll probably mirror the ones above. But in the meantime, we must stress that the aformentioned reset/recovery process does not currently resolve the issue for everybody. In addition, if you run into an issue with PIN number acceptance, then we think this is normally the last four digits of your phone number (unless you changed it before).
Some people had to do the reset procedure a few times, usually with gaps of a few hours between attempts, before it finally worked.
UPDATE 10:01am
Sky has issued another update, albeit this time with a link that doesn’t require a staff login to work 🙂 .
Sky Status Update – 9:25am
Some Sky Glass and Sky Stream customers are currently experiencing technical issues when trying to switch on their devices. Our engineers are working hard to fix this. In the meantime please visit this link in order to restore your device – https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-glass-stream-wont-turn-on
We are sorry for any inconvenience caused and remember you can watch on Sky Go right now.
We’ve also had an official response from Sky, but as expected they’ve merely repeated the aforementioned statements and so there’s nothing new to add. Sky did not respond to our query about the cause possibly being an attempted firmware or configuration update.
TIP: When trying to reset the Sky Glass TV, you might need to hold the power button for up to 20 seconds.