Sky+ viewers will be able to record football matches previously accessible only through an interactive service.

Following recent software updates, viewers of the UEFA Champions League matches on Sky Sports are now able to record the scheduled interactive streams on a Sky+ personal video recorder. The capability will be extended to Saturday night Premiership coverage in the future.

“Interactive recording gives our customers even more flexibility, choice and control over their TV viewing,” said Sky’s director of new product development, Brian Sullivan. “We will continue to develop the functionality with a view to extending the application to other third party channels and interactive services.”

The feature is enabled through an extension to the electronic programme guide. Selecting an enabled programme presents a second screen that offers the separate streams that can be recorded. These appear as separately scheduled programmes in the guide.

It is also possible to record a selected stream while viewing, provided that it has associated schedule information.

This could be potentially used to allow additional streams for other forms of enhanced television programmes to be recorded. However, it is not currently possible to record interactive applications.

In the future, use of local storage will enable much more sophisticated forms of enhanced television services.