Tonight I decided to get around to signing up to iSKY so I could watch online sports from my laptop in the bedroom, rather than sitting in the main lounge where the decoder is located.

For those that don’t know, iSKY.co.nz is an offering from SkyTvNZ for subscribers, it allows you to :

• Stream content (movies, tv shows) that you have missed
• Watch Live Sport channels online (if you have an existing Sport subscription)
• Rent the latest movies on demand

I was surprised how easy the sign up procedure was. I filled out the signup form with my details and account number, confirmed my email address and my account was activated within minutes. Live super rugby was on my laptop within seconds of logging in all streamed without any hesitation.

Sky offers 3 live sports channels and 2 live news channels. There is also the ability to catch up on sports highlights, TV and movies that you have missed right on demand from the site. Renting recent movies, documentaries and TV Series is available with the option of credit card payment.

If your ISP is Vodafone, Orcon, Woosh, Xnet, Snap or WizWireless you get unmetered access to iSKY, which means the data used in bringing the content to your home does not get counted in your monthly data allowance.

I also run a few MediaPortal Home Theatre PC’s at home in the main lounge, garage and family room, it would be good to be able to integrate iSKY into the MediaPortal HTPC’s that are not in the main lounge. When I get the chance I’ll sit down and see if I can create a plugin for MediaPortal that can log me in to my iSKY account and display the content avaliable.