Earlier this month, I was invited to check out a live demo of Shaw’s just-launched BlueSky TV down at Shaw’s downtown Vancouver HQ. I can honestly say that this new way of watching TV is a game-changer! It all starts with the very sleek voice-activated remote. This next-gen system allows you to use intuitive voice commands to find content, everything from “what’s trending” to “show me sports”.
Crave TV is also part of the BlueSky TV landscape, so watching on demand (either with one of Shaw’s premium cable packages or via Crave) brings an amazing amount of movies right into your home.
I’ve been catching up on HBO Canada’s Girls ahead of their newly-launched sixth season while my husband can keep up on his fave soccer matches.
[Find out via the voice-activated remote what the current score is]
Not only can you search a show and its stars, but your screen becomes a great resource showing actor biographies and what shows they’ve starred in. Simply navigate over to watch, PVR record or watch from the start!
Sports fans can keep track of scores in realtime. You can enter your fave teams into the system and when you watch your next game, learn about upcoming games and scores to the side of the main screen with the touch of the remote button.
There’s an entire KidsZone set up to get your family going with age-appropriate content, settings to lock them out at times of the day when they should be doing their homework, and a colourful, easy-to-navigate menu of pretty much anything and everything they’d want to watch.
Shaw BlueSky is powered by Comcast’s X1 platform, a technology already available in the US for a few years. Shaw customers in Vancouver and the Lower Mainland can take advantage of this service (priced at $99 a year for new subscribers on a two-year ValuePlan) that includes super-speedy Shaw WideOpen Internet 150.
[Shaw BlueSky TV apps]
We’ve had Shaw 150 for several months prior to having the BlueSky boxes installed (one per TV). It’s blazingly fast. For someone like me with a home office, uploading YouTube videos and photos to Flickr has become a welcome haven from the days of lagging speeds.
As a BlueSky tester, I’ll have the system for several months and look forward to giving you guys more feedback on our experiences over time. Meanwhile, check out Shaw’s BlueSky TV online.
This post produced in partnership with Shaw Communications Inc.
