Hands up if at least one of England's Euro 2020 goals was spoiled by the roar from a neighbour's house or the pub down the road?
If you, like me, have your hand up – and you're a Sky customer – you're going to love this upgrade that is rolling out to Sky Glass and Sky Stream.
That upgrade is 'Real Time', and it's designed to reduce latency when watching sport on Sky Glass/Stream – just in time for the World Cup.
Sky Glass and Stream have a fair amount of delay when compared with Sky Q and Freeview via the aerial – about 35-40 seconds against Sky Q's 10-15 seconds and Freeview's 8-10 seconds – but Sky tells me that Real Time reduces this by 22 seconds, and that this makes it "just 3 seconds behind Sky Q".
That means that the delay on Sky Stream should be down to around 13-18 seconds, which should be close enough to significantly reduce the chance of hearing about a goal before you see it.
Here's a graph showing the different delays of the various broadcast/reception methods, because I like that sort of thing:
Broadcast / reception delay
Here's how long, in seconds, it takes each broadcast type to show you a goal that's just been scored
Delay
| Product | Value |
|---|---|
| Live | 0 |
| Freeview (aerial) | 8 |
| Sky Q (satellite) | 10 |
| Sky Glass/Stream with Real Time | 13 |
| Sky Glass/Stream without Real Time | 35 |
| BBC iPlayer | 40 |
Sky Glass and Stream have actually had a low-latency feature for a while, but only for the Sky Sports Main Event channel.
That's no good for the World Cup, though, because all World Cup matches are broadcast in the UK by the BBC and ITV.
That's where Real Time comes in: it works on the BBC HD, ITV1 HD and ITV4 HD channels. And while Sky's press release mentions a somewhat vague "select live sports", a representative confirmed to me that all World Cup 2026 matches will be available with Real Time.
It's worth noting that Real Time won't be activated by default. Instead, once you tune in to the channel showing your match, a Real Time button will pop up. Select that, and the latency should immediately drop.
Another thing to note is that Real Time only works on the HD channels mentioned above. If you want to watch the World Cup in 4K, you will have to do so via BBC iPlayer, but you will have to accept around 40 seconds of delay in that case: the Beeb has been working on low-latency streaming for a while now, but it's seemingly not ready for wholesale rollout.
As always, actual delays can vary depending on factors such as broadband performance and how content is being delivered, but cutting more than 20 seconds from Glass and Stream's latency is a genuinely meaningful improvement.
For football fans, especially during a World Cup summer, it could make spoiled goals a thing of the past. That's a big win in my book.
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