Freely’s UK Broadband TV Streaming Service Adds More Channels
Broadband-based live TV streaming service Freely, which is supported by most of the major UK TV broadcasters (BBC, ITV etc.) and is an evolution – not (yet) a replacement – for the existing Freeview service (inc. Freeview Play and Freesat), has said they’re adding another 7 channels to the free platform via partnerships with Warner Bros. Discovery UK & Ireland and CNN.
The first of these channels, CNN Headlines (channel 305), has already gone live and will be followed in early 2026 by Quest, Quest Red, Food Network, DMAX, Really and TLC – which moves to free-to-air in January 2026. The new additions mean Freely will carry over 70 live channels via Wi-Fi, alongside more than 75,000 hours of on demand content. Further expansion is currently being planned for 2026.
Freely is currently available on new smart TVs from manufacturers including Hisense, Bush, Toshiba, Panasonic, JVC, Sharp, TCL, Amazon Fire TVs and METZ. Most recently these have also been joined by some “Plug-in and stream” devices, such as a new box from Humax and PLEIO from Netgem TV.
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Deep Halder, CCO of Everyone TV, said:
“These additional channels have so much to offer the Freely audience, further expanding the line-up for UK homes who are increasingly choosing to stream live TV. From global news delivered by CNN to the extensive portfolio of entertainment shows from Warner Bros. Discovery, who recently announced some exciting linear-first commissions of fan favourites including a new-look Mock the Week coming to TLC next year. Viewers will be able to easily and seamlessly access these brand-new shows, all in one place, for free, on Freely.”
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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Still needs to be a standalone app for Google/Apple/Fire TV.
I suspect they think they are being smart and restricting to the geographic UK by limiting to TVs and STBs.
I suspect it will be a while, if ever before that happens.
Because nobody has a clue how to vpn an STB…
@GG
Even with apps they can be a PITA e.g. BBC iPlayer on Android/Google TV, to the point that I can no longer (officially) watch the iPlayer on my Shield TV because the BBC made app doesn’t work and the Nvidia app won’t launch.
I suspect they just prefer to keep things locked down and only on licensed/certified/’gimme money’ devices.
This isn’t exclusive to Freely, I always thought it was annoying I had to use a Sky Q mini box instead of an app.
The main issue I have with new Netgem Freely box, is that ITV/C4/C5 and others try and deinterlace pictures to 25p resulting in a horrible picture of motion judder because of the loss of temporal motion.
Only the BBC correctly deinterlaces, BUT because Freely was quickly introduced, they simply use a feed used for iPlayer, and this means it has a BBC ident on BBC1 and BBC2 which Freeview and Freesat does not.
I have no doubt that the Freely box is ingesting most of the non-BBC content from CDNs as 1080i, and is also deinterlacing and upscaling to 2160p50 for UHD TVs. Why 1080I? Because most broadcasters are still stuck in legacy broadcast mode and haven’t upgraded to stream at 1080p. But, I hear you say, 1080i looks good on my UHD TV. It does because TVs and STBs have hardware deinterlacers and scalers whilst Pleio, a little IP-only device, does not. The only real solution is for the channels to stream at 1080p50.
Back to BBC: it outputs at 1080p50 or 720p50, so the box doesn’t have to do that awkward deinterlacing and the pictures look better.
ITV / C4/ C5 / Others are simply using an incorrect 1080p25 feed where HD. You can’t de-interlace properly and keep all quality when converting a 50i video into 25p. This matches the Live TV feed on their own catch-up players – so they have likely just used one of those for Freely.
The box isn’t de-interlacing the BBC feed as the BBC have already done that at the encoding stage, properly, and not crammed into 25p. The only issue with BBC is that it has a BBC on screen indent on BBC1 and BBC2 because its a feed used for iPlayer, rather than a feed used for Freeview/Freesat. So this feed is actually 1080p50 – yes deinterlaced into 50 frames. The BBC some years ago used to deinterlace to 25p, but they corrected it to keep temporal motion quality.
I suspect there will be apps eventually, the movement to using apps will lead to an exponential increase in usage and they need to make sure they can support it. The whole process looks to me like a gradual scaling up at the same time as they increase content
Netflix wins the bidding war for the Warner Bros crown jewels. It will be interesting to see how this impacts the BBC, ITV and EverywhereTV’ s strategy, and indeed its future relevance.
It hasn’t won it. Paramount are counter offering more in hostile bid direct to shareholders. Trump also said the big market share that Nerflux would have is a problem, and that he will oversee a decision if it’s netflix.
Until Paramount has no chance, it’s not done deal.
@FANNY ADAMS:
Netflix did win the “best and final” offer bidding contest.
Paramount has now gone to the shareholders, which is a different matter. The offer they are making to the shareholders is also different from their “best and final” offer made in the bidding process.
@FANNY ADAMS:
Your comments about Trump are correct, but that was expected. There is an issue with the Paramount bid in that it has bumped the valuation of Warner Bros far higher than the implied efficiency would explain.
Either way, the options open to UK linear providers are going to shrink, while ITV Studios may make a consolation morsel to any of the losing players.
Why would they introduce an app for Freely?
I thought the point was to sell new TVs, mostly?
They want people to keep using TVs I imagine, there are some advantages like remotes etc. More specialised HW. Loads of TV features as well that they can market.
The point of Freely is to get people off using their aerials so the UHF transmitters can be shut down & the spectrum can be reallocated & sold off to the mobile phone companies.
I was chatting to someone in the know, and they say that Freely won’t stay free for long, because its going to be adding some Sky channels and other pay per view subcription based channels in the future, and bit like how BT TV does already.
It’s most probably going to be sky mix, challenge and sky news like Freeview offers just now.
It’s a replacement for Freeview so don’t think it would all be behind a pay wall.
What concerns me is not every area has a strong enough broadband to totally rely on it, and scrap the aerial. The infrastructure isn’t there in all areas to convert over to Freely yet. They are running before they can walk.
More of the UK has sufficient broadband infrastructure for Freely than can receive broadcast TV. You have this back to front.
I suspect it won’t be long til an app is released either officially or unofficially. The Netgem android box proves this is possible unless it’s built into the device outside of the Android TV OS. I for one just bought a new TV and it doesn’t have Freely, nor was it a deciding factor.
I went with a Google TV simply because I want my apps without constantly having to use a second device. I can’t imagine too many people facing the prospect of another “digital switch over 2.0”, so an app makes sense.
The Freely section is sandboxed away from the Android side, it’s not a bog standard APK it’s basically two different operating environments with almost seamless switching. It’s a HbbTV spec and details are very thin on the ground how it works beyond DVB-I
I think the software / firmware has to be built from the ground up to support Freely streaming.
So, I don’t think it’s as easy as just adding an app for Freely, that can be used on any TV.
They could add an app for mobiles, but it kind of undermines the purpose of Freely.
Also, the remote on unsupported TVs would lack a Freely button. Kind of undermines the brand.
You can get a 32” Hisense Freely 1080p Freely TV or Hisense Freely 4K TV for between £150-£160 if you shop around.
I’ve heard that Freely tends to work the best on Hisense TVs because they were the first company to support Freely in TVs natively. At least, this is what ChatGPT tells me about what customers have said, RE: other brands.
There are quite a few sub 1080p Freely TVs on sale now that I wouldn’t touch with a barge pole, they’d be a downgrade for most people.
Something like 80-90% of residences can now sign up for either a FTTP or VM DOCSIS gigabit connection (due to be upgraded to FTTP by 2028). So, if you can’t get FTTP now, over 90% will be able to by 2028.
Lots of people are using Freely over WIFI, and I think this is where lots of the performance issues originate from. Worth getting ethernet connections setup, or maybe use homeplugs instead.
I wanna be able to access Freely on my PC which is connected to my TV via HDMI. Freely does not seem to allow this. Why Not?