A new TV service called Freely has been announced and will be available around April 2024 – but it could be a lot more important to the UK TV landscape than it initially appears.
When Sky Q launched in 2016, I rolled my eyes at a strategy that revolved around beaming content from satellites and mass-scale recording. After conversations with people inside Sky at the time (who understandably chose to remain anonymous), it was clear that I wasn’t alone in thinking that Sky’s new system was limited by its implementation.
Sky Glass and Sky Stream set out a new approach and although both platforms need some evolutionary refinement, they deliver something closer to the experience I had expected instead of Sky Q – the ability to stream everything. Sky Stream and Sky Glass – they run the same interface – offer the convenience of being able to stream live TV, rather than needing a connection to a physical receiver device like a satellite dish or aerial.
This ability liberates your TV: all you need is Wi-Fi and power, and when you’re adding a television to your home, that’s a huge advantage. Want a TV in your bedroom but don’t have an aerial socket? When you can stream everything you don’t need to think about (at best) running coaxial cable through your home, or (at worst) running a new cable from a roof aerial, channelling out the walls and installing a new socket.
Sky Stream offers something that other streaming devices don’t: you can’t do this on Fire TV, you can’t do it through Google TV and you can’t (currently) do this through Roku. But that might all be about to change, thanks to a new service called Freely.
Arise Freely, liberator of televisions!
Freely is a new service from Everyone TV that’s backed by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and 5. Freely will – like Sky Stream – offer access to those live terrestrial channels via the internet. They are wrapped into an EPG, so when it comes to accessing live TV content, it’s just like using any other Freeview TV guide.
Importantly, what Freely offers is access to those broadcast channels without the fuss of an aerial – you just need a Wi-Fi connection to liberate your television and leave you to watch live TV. The service is due to launch in Q2 2024 and Vestel has been confirmed as a manufacturer producing TVs that will incorporate Freely. Hisense was previously confirmed as a Freely hardware partner and as one of the fastest-growing brands in the UK, likely to lead the charge.
IMAGE CREDIT: FREELY
But it’s access to Freely as a platform that’s important and currently something of an unknown. While we know it will be available in various TV models, it’s the potential for integration into existing streaming devices that is interesting to me. Pack this into a Fire TV Stick or a Roku Stick and you’ve closed the circle, liberating your TV – and importantly, replicating some of the functionality that’s attractive about Sky Stream, but for much less money.
For UK viewers, that takes you closer to a holistic TV streaming experience, rather than a fractured experience where you have to flip from one content delivery method to another. Freely told me the focus is on smart TV launches for 2024, but Freely’s launch is an important step towards properly cutting the cord for UK TV services – and I can’t wait for that to happen.
