Sky Player on Xbox 360 review

The PC version (and the Windows 7 Media Center version) also lets you buy and rent other shows and movies for as little as £1.43 a programme. Currently these features aren’t available through the Xbox 360 service, although again Sky is hoping to add them soon.

One unique feature is the Party View mode. This creates a virtual living room that your avatar and your friends’ avatars can sit in, watching TV together. There’s even an emote key, so your avatar can visually display what you think of a show, and you can chat via the Xbox 360 headset. It’s a neat idea, but we can’t see it being used much.

Whether you think Sky Player on Xbox 360 is good value or not depends on what you want to do. For existing Sky subscribers the on-demand TV is free, making it excellent value. If you already have Multiroom or Broadband Unlimited, it’s even better as you get the live TV channels, too. If you don’t have a Sky subscription, the cost is comparable to a full Sky subscription, but you get far fewer channels for your money, so it’s hard to recommend. If you do want it, we’d strongly recommend waiting until Sky One is available as a live channel and the features of the PC version are introduced.