Have you been holding your breath waiting for Manhattan to add Freely support to their popular T4-R Freeview recorder? Well, you can exhale now. It’s not happening anytime soon.
In an announcement made this week, Manhattan addressed the elephant in the room: will their popular TV recording box work with Freely, the new streaming service that aims to replace traditional Freeview?
The answer is a firm no – while they’re “a fan of Freely,” their boxes won’t be making the switch at this point – and they present some very valid reasons.
Wait, What’s Freely Again?
Freely is Everyone TV’s ambitious attempt to bring traditional TV into the streaming age.
Launched in May 2024, it aims to be the natural successor to Freeview and Freesat, letting you watch live TV channels without faffing about with aerials or satellite dishes – just plug in your TV, connect to the internet, and you’re good to go.
At least, that’s the theory. In practice, Freely currently offers around 30 streaming channels, including the main broadcasters (BBC, ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5) and, since September, UKTV’s newly rebranded ‘U’ channels.
While that’s a decent start, it’s still a far cry from the 100+ channels you get with Freeview (You can get the rest of the channels, on Freely, by plugging in an aerial – but then what’s the point?)
Plus, Freely is only available on select 2024 TV models from manufacturers like Hisense, Vestel (under brands like Bush), and recently Fire TV televisions – so unless you’re in the market for a new telly, you’re out of luck.
Why Manhattan’s Saying “No”
The Manhattan T4-R, launched earlier this year, is a successor to one of the most popular Freeview recorders in the UK – the beloved T3-R.
The T4-R is essentially the Swiss Army knife of TV watching – letting you record hundreds of hours of shows, pause live TV, and access streaming apps like BBC iPlayer and ITVX, all through a slick, responsive interface (but it doesn’t have general streaming apps like Netflix or Disney+, so it can’t replace a streaming stick).
So when Manhattan says they’re not jumping on the Freely bandwagon, it’s worth paying attention to their reasons.
“Right now, [Freely] can’t offer the same breadth of channels as Freeview, nor can it rewind live TV or pause for an extended period of time,” they explained in their announcement this week.
But the real dealbreaker? “Crucially, there’s also no way to record shows on Freely.”
This recording limitation is a massive sticking point, and something I often hear from our readers – yes, even in this age of streaming.
While streaming services like ITVX and BBC iPlayer offer on-demand content, there’s something to be said for having your own personal library of recorded shows that won’t disappear when streaming rights expire or services decide to shuffle their content.
As Manhattan put it, switching to Freely would mean “losing what we know you love about our boxes – the ability to record your favourite shows so they’re yours forever.”
And of course – with recording, you can fast-forward the adverts…
Beyond Recording: More Missing Features
The differences don’t stop at recording.
The T4-R lets you pause live TV for up to two hours (perfect for those unexpected doorbell rings or lengthy tea-making sessions), and the Manhattan T4 box – which is a Freeview Play box without a hard drive or recording options – can pause live TV for up to 90 minutes.
Freely, on the other hand, only offers a 15-minute pause function – and only on some of its streaming channels.
Another key advantage of dedicated Freeview boxes is their customised interfaces.
Manufacturers like Manhattan spend years perfecting their TV guides and menus based on user feedback – tweaking everything from the channel guide layout to search functions and recording menus.
The T4-R, for instance, offers different ways to browse channels (by genre, channel, or time), customisable favourites lists, and a specially designed recording library with useful filters.
Manhattan highlighted that Freely doesn’t allow any of this customisation – every Freely TV has exactly the same interface.
While consistency across devices can be helpful for users, this one-size-fits-all approach means manufacturers can’t optimise their interfaces for specific hardware capabilities or add features that would take advantage of their devices’ unique strengths.
What Freely Still Needs To Fix
While Freely represents an interesting step toward TV’s streaming future (which is where the future of TV in the UK lies), it still has some growing up to do.
Channel Selection Needs Work
With only around 30 streaming channels, Freely’s lineup feels anaemic compared to Freeview’s extensive selection. Where are beloved channels like Talking Pictures TV? Or the music channels?
Even the shopping channels have their fans (no judgment here!). For Freely to truly replace Freeview, it needs to bring more broadcasters on board.
Recording: The Deal-Breaker
As mentioned, the complete absence of any recording capability is perhaps Freely’s biggest shortcoming. Yes, many shows are available on catch-up services, but what about the ones that aren’t?
Or shows that disappear from streaming after 30 days? A cloud recording solution – similar to what YouTube TV offers in the US – would go a long way toward making Freely more appealing (Sky Stream offers a very limited cloud recording functionality).
Pause and Rewind Limitations
Freely’s 15-minute pause limit feels like a relic from the early days of streaming.
When boxes like the T4-R offer two-hour pause times, and services like Sky Stream let you restart most shows from the beginning, Freely’s limited functionality seems inadequate (you can only restart Freely shows on its selection of streaming channels – and even then, not all shows).
Device Support Is Too Limited
Being restricted to only 2024 TV models is a massive barrier to adoption. Freely desperately needs to expand to older TVs, streaming sticks, and yes, set-top boxes. Not everyone wants to buy a new TV just to try a new service.
Our readers were excited recently when it was announced that Freely is coming to Amazon’s Fire TV – alas, it only came to Fire TV Televisions – and not the portable Fire TV Sticks.
And with Manhattan now saying they won’t have Freely support any time soon – it seems we’re going to be stuck with Freely TVs only, for a while.
Manhattan are 100% correct in all they say. Supporting TV’s only, not having a recording facility, not having it across a range of devices other than just TV’s, and not taking all broadcasters with them are big mistakes with a mediocre channel line up which will pulverise and kill Freely off if nobody wants it. Manhattan are right, while the people behind Freely are 100% wrong. Unless the people behind Freely, everyonetv, take note of those facts AND follow them, it’s going to be an expensive technological white elephant in the room.
The channel choice and lack of a recording function is what’s putting a lot of buying Freely.
How do everyonetv behind Freely know what people want? Are they technology psychics? Without more channels coming onboard, and refusing to offer a recording facility, Freely is going to fall on it’s sword and be what nobody wants. I’m with supporters of Broadcast 2040+ not everybodytv and I’m with Manhattan for refusal to adopt the Freely route because of those two reasons…..
I am so sorry, I don’t understand about Freely not available boxes nothing says “No” only Freeview is available service boxes.
I’ve just spent a grand on a new Samsung TV. To be honest, Freely never even came into the equation when summing up the pro’s and cons.
I still have my 3 year old BT set top box which can record all the programmes I want to record.
I left Sky Stream earlier this year because of (a) the expense, and (b) to poor performance of their ad skipping service.
The TV broadcasters seem to be hell bent on removing the recording facilities from new equipment, forcing viewers to watch the ads. Unfortunately for them, they have to persuade viewers to go along with this stance, which I believe very few will do.
For now, Freely is in a backwater – a place it will stay until it becomes what people want – a TV service with recording facilities. If it doesn’t, it will become another ITV Digital, consigned to the history books.
I am a dedicated freesat user. Anything else is via my roku box. No reason to change.
Edward Holford.
If Sky Stream, which after all is essentially a rival, can include almost all the Freeview channels on its streaming puck, then why can’t Freely stream them too? It’s the same company as Freeview!
And of course all this hinges on decent broadband speeds unlike the Freesat i use. And the other loss is the ability to fast forward the anal tv advertising !
I’d guess the technical investment to make it work is just not worth it.
Freely needs more “friends” in the streaming stick side to gain and accelerate take up.
My VHS.recorder and digital analogue converter might not be hd. But can record programs to tape and no need for WiFi to watch them and tapes last decades
Just watching my new T-4R that I picked up today. Replaces my ageing Talk Talk YouView box and I’m chuffed to bits. I’m sure Freeview will be there for a long time to come.
As a freesat user we like the fact that you can program a series and not have to remember that you are watching a particular series it automatically appears in the recorded list.
With Freely you need to remember what series you are watching or even a one off program in the next few days. My problem is that I can never remember the program names half the time
I’m glad I’ve got my Humax Aura box ,at least you can record Anything! I’m not struck with this Freely and hope it never takes off completely IMHO.