“With Sky Cinema we are giving customers an even closer to the cinema experience with enhanced picture and sound quality. A better service needs a new name and Sky Cinema is about delivering the ultimate offering for movie fans everywhere,” said Ian Lewis, director of Sky Cinema. Read our hands-on Sky Q review which looks at both the entry-level Sky Q and top-end Sky Q Silver. Read everything you need to know about Sky Q.
What is Sky Cinema? Release date and price
Although it’s something of an iconic sub-brand, Sky has decided to rename Sky Movies. The service, including all the channels, will soon be called Sky Cinema instead. The Sky Cinema release date is 8 July and there it’s free for existing and new Sky subscribers. To be clear, Sky Movies will rebrand to Sky Cinema across Sky TV, Sky Now TV, Sky Go and also BT, Virgin Media TiVo 2016 4K box release date and specs rumours and TalkTalk. “Sky Cinema will be the biggest dedicated movie subscription service in Europe as Sky’s movie services in Germany, Austria and Italy are also rebranded and relaunched under the new name,” said the firm. Read: What is Sky Kids?
Sky Cinema movie premieres
With the launch of Sky Cinema, the firm is promising a new premiere every day of the week, which is 75 percent more than the current offering of four per week on Sky Movies. These will include Spectre (8 July), Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation (9 July), Steve Jobs (18 September), Bridge of Spies (30 September) and The Danish Girl (23rd October). Sky also said it’s ‘most ambitious Christmas movie collection yet’ will include The Jungle Book, Zootopia and Captain America: Civil War. Read: Best Sky Movies on demand 2016. See below for what films will premiere on Sky Cinema in July and August: July Spectre Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation Ant-Man Minions Movie Crimson Peak Strange Magic The Walk Solace Theeb Everest Me, Earl and the Dying girl Tangerines The Scout’s Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse Four Corners Burnt El Ardor August Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens The Man from U.N.C.L.E The Martian The Good Dinosaur Hotel Transylvania 2 Suffragette The Perfect Guy Sixteen Pan Dragonball Z: Battle of the Gods The Dressmaker Survivalist Tokyo Tribe Hour of the Lynx
Sky Cinema on-demand, pop-up channels and ‘World Cinema’ slot
As well as the above, Sky has confirmed that there will be more on-demand content available via Sky Cinema. It touts around 1,200 films including classics and blockbusters which is an increase of 20 percent. Following the popularity of Sky’s pop-up channels (dedicated channels for franchises like Harry Potter), there will be even more when Sky Cinema launches. There will be at least one new pop-up channel every month rather than only a few times each year with Disney-Pixar, Star Trek and Superheroes already planned for the next six-months. The new ‘World Cinema slot’ will take place at 10pm every Wednesday to showcase ‘the best stories from around the world’ including El Ardor (Argentina); Theeb (UAE); Tangerines (Estonia).
Sky Cinema better HD quality and 4K Ultra HD content
Although there’s still a little wait for 4K Ultra HD content on Sky Q – films in the high resolution format will arrive ‘by the end of the year’ – there’s good news until that does happen. Sky Cinema will come with a better HD quality as standard as well as improved audio for selected on-demand films. These are available for Sky Q and Sky+HD users. There’s also a new ‘restart’ feature which means you can watch a film from the beginning no matter when you tune in. The new HD quality comes thanks to a new internal master format which Sky is employing. This provides a third more pixels and four times the number of colour shades of the current HD offered. Sky says this means “sharper and more vibrant pictures for a better viewing experience”. Tech Advisor’s Reviews Editor, Chris has been reviewing all kinds of tech for over 10 years and specialises in audio. He also covers a range of topics including home entertainment, phones, laptops, tablets and more.
