Sky Television’s long-awaited Sky Box and Sky Pods are a step closer, with customer trials commencing from today.

The launch will be a key moment for Sky, with the company telling shareholders in November that the new box is the “most transformative product we have offered our customers in many years”.

Sky said today a range of customers from its Sky Nation panel had volunteered to be triallists on the new technology over January.

“Today is an important milestone,” a statement from Sky said.

 “We are delighted to be sharing these transformational new products with our customer triallists and look forward to hearing their feedback. We also look forward to offering the new Sky Box and Sky Pod more widely in the coming weeks.”

The Sky Box (which will involve a $200 up-front fee) will offer regular Sky channels via a satellite dish and feature apps including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, Neon and Spark Sport via broadband, and offer frills including 4K ultra-high definition and a roomy hard drive.

The smaller Sky Pod ($100 upfront) will lack a hard drive and is aimed at those currently accessing Sky via the soon-to-be-shuttered Vodafone TV, which was in around 100,000 households as of August, according to the telco - although neither side would say how many were using it for Sky content.

The Sky Box was originally due “mid-year”. Sky has blamed the pandemic and war for production delays, and says it won’t rush delivery.

Vodafone TV was earlier given a stay of execution until this month, to allow Sky extra time to deliver its new hardware.

Sky shares last traded up 2c to $2.29.

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In November chairman Philip Bowman told shareholders at their annual meeting Sky was adopting a new dividend policy that should see fatter payouts to shareholders.

The pay-TV broadcaster previously said it would pay out between 50 to 80 per cent of free cashflow in dividends. That range has been increased to 60 to 90 per cent.

“As a result of the change, Sky’s dividend guidance for F20Y23 has been increased to between $18 million and $24m.”

That’s up from the previous given $12.8m, which equated to 7.3 cents per share.