About 5 years ago the guy who was renting my spare room moved out. The Sky package was in his name because he’d wanted it and paid for it but I decided to keep it on after he left. Could they change over the account holder for us? No. It would have to be a new account, new minimum 12 month sub, new sky box and the worst was “new” internet connection requiring me to be without broadband for 3 weeks whilst they “reconnected”. Ridiculously unhelpful. And this was after spending about 2 hrs on the phone to them.

Have you been holding all that hate inside for five whole years???

Actually I think that you will find that Android has a bigger market share than Apple now.
The reason developers concentrate on Apple is because IOS is pretty much the same whether its the iPhone,iPad,iPad mini,iPod touch its just scaled up or down for the screen size.
Android on the other hand is heavily fragmented,lots of different versions around i.e.2.3 or 4.0 or 4.1 or 4.2.
Then each of these versions can be different again depending on whether its the vanilla/untouched version such as what you see on the Nexus devices or skinned by HTC,Samsung,Sony,Motorola etc.
So its harder to develop for as it involves much more testing/£.
The answer is if you prefer Android as a OS go for a Nexus device as these ones will be supported the longest with the newest updates.
Me I have more important things to worry about than does Sky go work on my phone.

The HDMI thing could be got round easily enough without having to release a whole new app,
suggest how to Sky then, if you know how…

You only need to re-code and test the HDMI disabling class, not the entire app.. not rocket science.

Have you been holding all that hate inside for five whole years???

Yes. I feel better now.

Android does have bigger market share, because its just an OS. It’s not a handset. There are dozens of different Handsets and tablets running lots of different flavours of Android. iOS only runs on handsets and tablets designed specifically to handle the OS, so of course devs will go for what is easiest to produce for, and more importantly, make money from.

Both iOS and Android have pros and cons stretching from hardware to software differences/issues.

To the OP, if having the Sky Go App is this important to you then get an iphone, like most phones they are free/cheap on contract so switch over come renewal time.

if having the Sky Go App is this important to you then get an iphone

iPod Touch would probably be more cost-effective, non?

Oh and for all the “wah wah iPhone” evangelists I’ll remind you, this is about one app from one company. Android does sometimes play second fiddle to iOS from an app development perspective, but this sort of handset-specific weirdness is highly atypical.

I’ve got a slingbox because the sky go app it terrible, doesn’t work outside the UK either.

You only need to re-code and test the HDMI disabling class, not the entire app.. not rocket science.

apart from the point retro83 made about it not being easy to control HDMI output from the API, you then have to test on every phone that runs android, plus multiple versions of android, plus make sure that it can’t be hacked around.

So not so trivial in terms of resources required, for something that is free.

To the OP, if having the Sky Go App is this important to you then get an iphone, like most phones they are free/cheap on contract so switch over come renewal time.

i have to wait until November before the current contract finishes :(…but i won’t be going over to apple….i wont be getting another sony either. as good as the phone is and i still believe its a better overall phone than the iphone, i dont like how sony restrict the software updates that are made available to it…

Oh and for all the “wah wah iPhone” evangelists I’ll remind you, this is about one app from one company. Android does sometimes play second fiddle to iOS from an app development perspective, but this sort of handset-specific weirdness is highly atypical.

thanks cougar!! 😀

So not so trivial in terms of resources required, for something that is free.

SkyGo isn’t free. It’s paid for by all the sky subscribers who will happily pay ~£50+ for a choice of channels. It’s also a deal sweetener that is worth a hell of a lot to Sky as it is one of the increasingly few things that differentiate Sky from Virgin Media.

worth a hell of a lot

bet it isn’t – anyway there may be some point to developing for tablets but only geeks watch tv on their phones…

There’s other things they should concentrate on as the differentiators between them and virgin.

For instance, if you take out a subscription to sky sports, you then have to pay extra to get the HD channels !

HD channels should now be standard fare, not a chargeable extra, especially as SD channels are now such poor quality and way lower than the old analogue PAL pictures.

HD channels should now be standard fare, not a chargeable extra

They obviously charge for it because they can (it’s “HD and 3D” package now, sneakily), but I do wonder how long they’ll be able to sustain it as more channels get on board.

especially as SD channels are now such poor quality and way lower than the old analogue PAL pictures.

Yeah, I’d noticed that. It’s almost as if they want you to move to HD… oh.

apart from the point retro83 made about it not being easy to control HDMI output from the API, you then have to test on every phone that runs android, plus multiple versions of android, plus make sure that it can’t be hacked around

Yeah but that doesn’t apply to the whole app, does it?

especially as SD channels are now such poor quality and way lower than the old analogue PAL pictures.

I think this is because they have only a limited amount of bandwidth due to all the HD channels and +1 channels etc nowadays. Obviously something has to give and it might as well be the largely useless SD channels. Agree the quality is shocking these days though!

Yeah but that doesn’t apply to the whole app, does it?

And your point is? They still have to test on lots of handsets and OS versions. Still work.

I suppose your one of those developers that relies on a test team to find all your bugs?

SD channels dropped badly in quality as soon as freeview came along 🙁

I am saying that I don’t think it’s as hard as they made out. In other words, they can’t really be bothered to put a lot of resources into it.