Sky+ box update enhances the movie experience

Satellite broadcaster Sky continues its series of rolling improvements to its Sky+ and Sky+ HD box today with a trio of new features for Sky Movies.

Watchlist enables users to create a personalised film library, so you can add films to your wishlist with a single click of the green button on the remote, to watch at a later date.

And for those who regularly miss the first five or ten minutes of a film, the Watch from Start option means you can download the film once it has started, then watch from the beginning.

Also new is the More Like This feature which, as the name suggests, is a film recommendation service. Click the yellow button for suggestions of similar films based on ones you've already selected. If you like The Lego Movie, for example, you will be offered similar family titles such as The Box Trolls and Maleficent.

Later this year Sky will introduce its Rotten Tomatoes audience star rating system to help you choose which films you'd like to watch. The company is facing increasing competition from other catch-up TV services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.

The BBC recently improved its iPlayer to add a Live Restart feature for smart TVs and cross-device pause and resume, so viewers can pause a video stream on one device and resume watching it on another.

Luke Bradley-Jones, Sky's director of TV products, says: "This is just the latest in a series of enhancements we are rolling out every few months to make sure Sky+ continues to make TV watching a brilliant experience."

MORE: Read our full Sky+ HD review

MORE: Sky planning support for 4K Ultra HD

Andy Clough

Andy is Global Brand Director of What Hi-Fi? and has been a technology journalist for 30 years. During that time he has covered everything from VHS and Betamax, MiniDisc and DCC to CDi, Laserdisc and 3D TV, and any number of other formats that have come and gone. He loves nothing better than a good old format war. Andy edited several hi-fi and home cinema magazines before relaunching whathifi.com in 2008 and helping turn it into the global success it is today. When not listening to music or watching TV, he spends far too much of his time reading about cars he can't afford to buy.