Forum Discussion

newapollo's avatar
newapollo
Very Insightful Person
17 days ago

Upcoming Freely pod - Watch, Stream and Play.

There may be an official announcement regarding the above in the next couple of weeks.

It's actually a streaming pod (stick) by netgem named the Pleio

https://netgem.co.uk/pleio/

There an infomative video showing and describing this new offering.

This combined Freely TV comes with a host of streamers, not just the usual PSB ones such as BBC iPlayer, ITVX etc, but also netflix, Prime, TNT Sports, Now, DAZN, Discovery+ and a host of FAST channels. There's also a gamepad included so you can play online games streamed direct to your TV.

/introducing-pleio-by-netgem:-watch-stream-play

EDIT - There's also a "launch" page with more screenshots.  The page is still in a state of flux as the Purchase links on the page don't work, and there's also 2 "project" links and FAQ's in latin.

https://netgem.co.uk/pleio-live/

4 Replies

  • Roger_Gooner's avatar
    Roger_Gooner
    Alessandro Volta
    2 days ago

    I watched the video of a presentation by Silvain Thevenot. He repeatedly referred to the Pleio is a puck (so I think it is a similar size to Sky's puck and VM's Stream). He said it is running Android TV (I'd assumed it would be Netgem's own middleware) with the gen-ai assistant TV Genius for sophisticated searches. FAST channels will be a big attractions and cloud gaming with quality games, a gamepad (which comes with the puck) in a move to capture casual gamers with gaming servers inside ISP's networks resulting in 10ms latency (so far better than Google's failed Stadia) will be difference maker in this fast growing market. As the box runs Android TV there will be support for other gamepads which the serious gamers will have.

    And come to think of it there isn't another streaming device which is bundled with a gamepad (Nvidia stopped this bundling with the Shield in 2019), meaning a strategic fusion of streaming and gaming with the Pleio positioned as a hybrid entertainment hub and not just another streaming box.

  • Roger_Gooner's avatar
    Roger_Gooner
    Alessandro Volta
    2 days ago

    My firm belief is that Pleio will slowly enable Freely to become huge (with Freely supported TVs) with PSBs' FAST channels becoming one of Freely’s most strategic advantages.  However I see some confusion.

    • If you get Freely from a TV you pay nothing.
    • If you get Freely from the Pleio box directly from Netgem you pay a subscription of £9.99pm (but no purchase price as far as I can tell).
    • If you get Freely from the Pleio box from a retailer such as Currys or Argos I'd expect a £50-£99 purchase price with a possibly lower monthly subscription.

    It seems likely the subscription is a 30-day rolling contract similar to VM's Flex - an add-on to broadband for 30 days costing £5pm. So, I think these will be the direct rivals. 

    You might wonder why you have to pay for Freely via a box but not via a TV. The answer is that the box is far more sophisticated, providing a greater number of apps (and likely better supported), many FAST channels (free ad-supported streaming curated mainly by the PSBs from their enormous back catalogues with some by Netgem) and gaming apps (casual games with wireless controller support). As a comparison think of the Apple TV app from a TV with the Apple TV 4K, i.e. the 4K box provides far more than the TV app.

    I'll be quite interested to see how this pans out in the coming months and years.

  • Adduxi's avatar
    Adduxi
    Very Insightful Person
    2 days ago

    I’ll be more interested in the Humax one, if it ever arrives of course.  Also the BBC have one in the pipeline apparently?  As long as it has an Ethernet connection I’ll be happy …

    In the meantime I’ll stick with my Humax Freeview ;-)