New UK smart TV service Freely has announced today that its new, all-streaming platform is going to become available on the TVs of a further four brands over the course of 2024.
The Freely service is designed to deliver all the benefits to the viewing experience that streaming can bring to the free TV world (such as switching seamlessly between live and on demand TV, pausing/restarting TV shows and live streams, instant access to more episodes and so on), with no subscription required. Prior to today’s announcement, though, Freely has only been available (since April) on UK TVs from Hisense and Bush. So UK consumers will be pleased to hear that the innovative new service is now confirmed as also coming to new TVs from Toshiba, Sharp, Panasonic and Metz.
In Toshiba’s case, the new Freely compatible TVs will also benefit from native 4K resolution, Quantum Dot technology to enhance their colour performance, and Dolby Atmos sound. Sharp, meanwhile, is going to be integrating Freely into new G4K and GM6 series of 4K TVs, the latter of which will join the Toshiba models in offering Quantum Dot colour support.
Panasonic is going big on Freely by introducing the streaming service to almost every level of its 2024 TV range, including OLED, QLED (Quantum Dot again) and basic LED models. Some of these Panasonic models, particularly the OLED sets, will arguably represent the most premium TVs the Freely service has been available on to date.
German brand Metz, finally, which only launched into the UK market relatively recently, will be hoping that its wide range of 43-inch, 50in, 55in and 65in Freely-equipped TVs will really kick start its UK venture. Metz’s Freely LCD TVs are confirmed as using the premium Quantum Dot system to produce their colours rather than a traditional filter system, and are also going to carry support for both Dolby Atmos sound and the Dolby Vision version of high dynamic range picture technology, which adds extra scene by scene picture information to help compatible TVs present their HDR pictures more effectively.
Deep Halder, Chief Commercial Officer for Everyone TV, the BBC/ITV/Channel 4/Channel 5-backed organisation behind Freely’s roll out, had this to say of the latest TV brand expansion: “Having recently brought Freely to market on new Hisense and Bust TVs, we’re delighted to be announcing increased availability of Freely with four new Smart TV partners due to launch later this year. A joint venture between Britain’s leading broadcasters, Freely is built on collaboration and it is encouraging to see more of the industry coming together to contribute to the success of Freely, working together to secure the future of free TV.”
In light of Halder’s comments about Freely being built on collaboration, it’s worth adding that as I reported in this earlier article, the service has also worked closely with Xperi in the development of that company’s new TiVo OS smart TV platform.
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