Netgem TV PLEIO Streaming Box Back in Stock with 12-Months Free Sub UPDATE
Digital entertainment platform Netgem TV has today announced that their recently launched (here) next gen IPTV box – PLEIO, which includes support for the UK’s new broadband-based live TV streaming service – Freely, will be back in stock for retail customers sometime today. The updated deal also includes 12 months free subscription to their premium content.
Just to recap. PLEIO was initially made available both at retail via Amazon (affiliate link) and bundled by several ISPs (Brsk, Connect Fibre and WightFibre) as a fully managed white-label service. But the retail kit saw higher than expected consumer demand and promptly sold out.
The retail price at launch was £99, which included the streaming PLEIO Puck (box), PLEIO Voice Remote, PLEIO Gamepad and a 3-month trial of the Netgem PLEIO subscription. The optional subscription included access to 250+ Cloud Games and 150+ extra channels – after that trial period it rises to a £9.99 per month.
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Netgem TV have this morning informed ISPreview that the retail box will finally be back in stock today and they’ll also bump up the free subscription period from 3-months to 12-months. In addition, the company says “this update will also apply to customers who have already purchased PLEIO via Amazon, with whom Netgem will be in touch directly“. Nice.
Customers who purchased PLEIO through a broadband ISP are “not subject to a subscription, and will always receive all the content. Access to the full range of Freely content, and all the streaming apps available via the Google Play Store, will always be available, even after the 12 month initial period“.
UPDATE 6th Dec 2025 @ 8:23am
Netgem TV inform us that they’ve run into some last minute and unexpected delays with getting fresh stock to market. Apparently, new stock will become available “soon“.
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Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Looks like there is no interest in this.
Is that why it sold out?
Freely BUT subscription!
What will be FREE ?
Please list what is free for ever ..
@Simon it might help if you’d read the article that Mark has written…
“Access to the full range of Freely content, and all the streaming apps available via the Google Play Store, will always be available, even after the 12 month initial period”
@Simon, the Freely part is free, in other words, the part that will or may replace Freeview. so your normal channels, BBC, ITV, Ch4, C5 and so on. It is Netgems own stuff that is subscription.
Dead in the water unless broadcasters like ITV /C4 / C5 encode their pictures properly and not force 1080i50 to 1080p25 resulting in a horrendous picture of motion judder. Only the BBC did it properly by deinterlacing into 1080p50.
Also, oddities like Disney and Apple TV can’t do frame rate matching as they don’t use the Google API to do it unlike Netflix and Emby. So you get dropped frames on motion for 24p content (movies and some TV content). This is with Frame Rate Match ON in the settings. It’s a known Android/Google TV thing and not Netgem’s fault as the app vendors should use the API provided to do frame rate switching.
Freely will become known as the platform with inferior picture so doomed unless they fix this.
Yeah I wish everyone would get their act together on frame rate matching (and dynamic range matching for that matter). It just looks so bad without it – for me – unwatchable. On my Apple TV all the apps work EXCEPT YouTube. Although Now TV does also need to be set directly to 4K 50Hz HDR in the settings in order for UHD HDR to work, though will match in HD just not in UHD. I remember YouTube frame rate matching working for a few weeks one time and then they disabled it. So they can do it, they just don’t want to for some reason. I wish they’d just fix it!
It is NOT available via Amazon,
I just checked
Still Unavailable
Sold out again.
Anyone have feedback on using this box. Do you have to register/login with each broadcaster app first?
Is it reliable playback over WiFi for linear tv playback?
Yes as long as your broadband and WIFI work fine, its rock solid.
You have to register to use any catch up players as is usual practice for on demand, and for ITV channels live TV playback, you must first register or login with your ITVx credentials, even for live TV. Seems to be the only broadcaster insisting on this.
I didn’t have to register to watch any of the live tv channels. I did however have to login for iplayer etc as expected.
@ukp, That is something I really don’t get, There is no subscription for the Iplayer and they don’t use the info normally to catch people out if they don;t have a TV licence, so why should people have to sign in?
Oh yes, that thing called Data, lots and lots of Data.
While it is to a problem for me as I don’t use Iplayer, but I think there should be a way to use it without an account.
Don’t forget your TV License everyone! ‘They’ will know you are using it to watch Live TV.
They will not know whatsoever, how can they? The only way would be if Netgem grabbed your IP addresses and somehow TVL knew that IP address belonged to someone who did not have a TV licence.
I could watch any live channel I wanted to, online or via Freeview, even watch BBC iPlayer and they would not have a clue that I don’t have a TV licence.
The only way TVL sometimes know is if someone uses the same email address to tell TVL they don’t need a licence to what they use to sign in to Iplayer. The best thing is not to tell TVL you don’t need a licence, there is no law to say we have to.
Licence free for must be over 10 years and certainly have not told them I don’t need a TV licence, no point.
The only thing I get is letters now and again, I do have a BBC account for BBC sounds,
The lack of an ethernet port kills it for me.
Otherwise, these would complement a HDMI monitor quite well.
Its always unacceptable in Amazon app
I mean unavailable sorry.
need to sell it without the controller for £50-£60.