The SkyTV iOS app is free, and I rarely use it, but on occasion is is very handy. The application is mostly a TV Guide – since SkyTV refuses to let anyone else have their listings, but they do have all the free-to-air channels, it’s clearly the best guide. However, I don’t really have much use for a guide, because I’m never looking for something to watch (everything I’m interested in is scheduled to record).
Where the app is occasionally useful is that it can be connected to your MySKY box, and you can remotely schedule a program to be recorded. This is essential for those times when you’re away from home and remember that a new program is starting in a few hours and you forgot to schedule it. The scheduling is limited (e.g. you can’t set up a series link), but it’s good enough for these situations.
As you’d expect from SkyTV, the process of setting this up is incredibly painful. You need to enter your SkyTV account details and the unique ID of the smart card in the MySKY box, and although this should be a smooth process, it never works first time – and then, without anything being done at all, will ‘magically’ start working at some later date (I’m guessing that the linking process takes time, and the app fails to tell the user this, leading them to believe they did something wrong).
Once it is finally set up, though, it’s very simple to use – just find the program you’re interested in recording and a few taps later it’s scheduled. Test it at home first, of course! (But not right away, because, as above, it doesn’t appear to work until a few hours have passed since the initial setup).
If you’ve got MySKY and an iOS device, then this is absolutely an app that you should have installed (it is free, after all!). If you don’t have MySKY, but you do want to use a TV Guide on iOS, then this is the more comprehensive one for New Zealand listings, so (again given that it’s free), it’s worth having.
Note that the app doesn’t offer any sort of iSKY (on demand video) access. It would be extremely nice if that was added in the future, but I’m skeptical that it will be.
TonyAndrewMeyer 