Not sold on Sky Glass? The latest major upgrade might be enough to change your mind

Sky Glass is getting its second major upgrade since its launch in late October. This all-in-one 4K television, which incorporates everything you need to stream live terrestrial channels, boxsets, movies and sport over a Wi-Fi connection, has already received one software update, which focused on fixing some underlying bugs and glitches. But the second update has already started to roll out to customers this morning and tweaks how one of the biggest new additions to Glass, known as Playlist, works on this QLED TV.

For those who don’t know about Sky Glass, this is the first product from Sky to ditch the unsightly satellite dish on your roof. Instead, everything you need to enjoy a boxset binge is tucked inside the telly as this gadget includes a QLED screen, a microphone array for hands-free channel changing, a Wi-Fi connection, and even an in-built soundbar – that means all you need to do is plug the telly into a power outlet and you’ll be able to watch live and on-demand content all night.

With prices starting from just £13 per month, this TV has plenty going for it but, as you can read in our full Sky Glass launch review, it did have some drawbacks, including the fact there’s no hard drive for all your recordings. Instead, Sky is using something called Playlists to store content you want to watch at a later date. We had some issues with this feature, but thankfully, Sky is already making some much-needed improvements in its second-ever update to the all-in-one TV.

Sky says that it’s “making Playlist better” thanks to a bunch of changes including the ability to view everything you’ve added straight from the homepage.

The Playlist rail will also now go directly to playback, so when you select what you want to watch, it’ll play the episode or movie straight away rather than taking you to a show centre, so you can get to content more quickly. Another bonus that will make things far less confusing now means shows that are yet to be broadcast won’t appear in the Play Now rail until they have actually aired. Once they are then broadcast these will become the first items in the rail making them quicker to discover.

If you add a live broadcast to your Playlist (for example, True Blood on Sky Atlantic) but it’s already available via on demand, it’ll instantly be added to your Play Now rail, so you don’t have to wait. Finally, when in your Playlist section, you’ll now see a range of rails from TV shows, Movies, Sport, Kids, Play now and Continue Watching on Netflix so you can easily find what genre you want to watch.

Along with that update to Playlists, Sky Glass users are also getting an improved Restart feature. Sky says that this is its “biggest update to the TV Guide yet” with a new standalone rail appearing at the top of each category, showing you what shows, sports, movies and more that you can easily restart from the beginning, without having to click into the programme in easy-to-read thumbnails.

You can also restart BBC programmes for the first time, simply by selecting the channel, pressing the red button and selecting ‘Restart’ on the right-hand side menu or opening the iPlayer app. This means you won’t need to press record, or come back later on, to jump back to the beginning if you’ve switched over channels a little too late.

This update, which is being pushed out to Sky Glass customers from today, is a very promising indication that Sky Glass is going to get better over time.