Sky Player for Xbox has turned up and here are my first impressions.

After a small initial download Sky Player loads up and is very slick, integrating nicely with the general Xbox 360 user interface. Both live and on demand downloadable content are offered. Buffering times are short and streaming live TV is acceptable quality, though not as good as a ‘real’ broadcast. All the usual channels are available, including movies. It’s not clear whether TV programmes and movies are available in HD, but from the download sizes it seems that they’re not. If you have parental controls activated on your console you’ll need to enter the pass code to run Sky Player.

As well as an Xbox Live Gold account you’ll need to sign up for a free Sky Player account. Signing up and adding the details to an Xbox is pretty painless. When you login your Xbox 360 is registered and Sky can only be used on that console. However, once you are set up the nagging to sign up to a subscription begins. TV shows are available to download for 98p a go, but everything else seems to be subscription only.

If you are already a Sky subscriber then Sky Player on Xbox is a great new way to access TV channels and movies. Also, it’s a good way to get Sky in the first place as there’s no dish, set top box or installation necessary. With no subscription it’s OK, but pretty restrictive. If only they’d enabled downloads of movies on a pay as you go basis using Microsoft points, as you can already do with Xbox 360 videos and movies, I think they’d be onto a winner.