Xbox 360 Sky Player Goes Live

The Xbox 360 Sky Player has finally gone live today on the UK Xbox Live Servers and unlike "original" thoughts where the consoles firmware would have to be updated - all the you have to do is download the Sky player from the video marketplace for free.

The Sky player is a FREE Download, but there is a charge for using the service, which varies depending if you an existing sky customer or a new customer.

If you are a completely new Sky Customer you can pay £15 a month for a basic package, which will give you a selection of "live channels" (such as G.O.L.D, Sky News, Cartoon Network) and a variety of "on demand channels" (such as Sky ONE) - for premium channels like Sky Movies and Sky Sports, a higher fee will be charged, however the monthly price is not a strict contract, so you can "opt-out" at any time and rejoin at any time.

For Existing sky customers, it gets a little bit more complicated because if you are a Sky Multiroom (or a Sky Broadband Customer) you get the live channels and on demand services for FREE (depending on your current sky package, for example if you have everything on your sky package you can watch everything on the xbox sky player - if you pay for movies but not sports, you can only watch the movie channels).

However if you are an existing sky customer that does NOT have multiroom you are required to pay £9.75 a month (which is exactly the same price as having a proper multi-room subscription). But yet again if you paid this £9.75 on your xbox Sky Player you can only watch channels / programmes that mimic your current sky package.

An Online SKY ID Account is also required to login onto the Sky Player, this way it can make sure you watching the right channels and paying the right subscription amounts. If you have already been using Sky Player on a PC or setup a Sky Account online then it will be the same username and password.

So Depending on what sort of package you have depends if it benefits you, for me i will benefit from it as i do not have a sky box in this room and i like to watch movie channels - all i need to do now is wait for the service to actually work (as the Sky Player servers are currently down).