Sky may be planning to launch a set-top box that would save your recordings to the cloud, making them accessible from anywhere using a smartphone or tablet. The move would be a major change for Sky, and is apparently in response to growing competition from Apple TV and Amazon's recently-launched FireTV .

According to The Sunday Telegraph , BSkyB has created a new development team known internally as "Project Ethan", which is designing an entirely new set-top box that will make it easier for customers to access their recordings from any device.

TV recordings made using Sky+ wouldn't be saved to an internal hard disk, but would instead be cached in a central data centre which would make them accessible from any internet-connected TV, smartphone or tablet. Viewers would be able to pause the action on their TV, then pick up where they left off on another device.

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Although understood to be separate from Project Ethan, Sky is also reportedly working on a new Ultra HD, 4K package which would carry its own subscription separate from existing Sky packages, along with a dedicated set-top box for decoding Ultra High Definition content.

Sky has only recently overhauled its Sky+HD EPG to put on-demand and catch-up services on equal footing with live TV and user recordings, so an even greater focus on internet-connected streaming services isn't out of the question.

Sky, however, has refused to comment directly on the rumours, only telling the Daily Telegraph "Innovation is at the heart of Sky’s business and we are constantly looking at ways of enhancing our service for customers.”