Freely

    Yesterday I started thinking about buying a new TV (my old Panasonic is no longer supported on TV Hub) went to currys.co.uk & Amazon to see what was on offer and found a lot now offered Freely rather than Freeview.

    Anyone any idea how this will work with LibreElec/Kodi/TVHeadend?

    Google (AI) tells me that Freely's IPTV services are not DRM encryptied, but I'm not able to find any information online (from a brief search) about how you would configure something. Everything talks about "using your Freely equipped TV" and that appears to be based on an app (OpApp) embedded in the TV's OS rather than accessing from something else.

    noggin Can you share any light on what might be possible?

    From what I can read on the internet I can't quite figure it out. On the face of it it looks similar to the Plus 1 or various catch up services but incorporating live TV as well. Firstly it looks as though you have to log on to watch anything (some of the hubs are like that now and maybe the TV will remember but I don't know about Kodi or TVH) but it looks as though the stream can switch between internet & antenna depending on the existence of the internet connection.

    Very confusing

    It's an IPTV stream (not antenna) hence all the talk of being "on wifi" on the website, but currently it's all wrapped up in a custom app which is only available on the latest-generation TV's. I've seen things written about it being 'open' but then cannot find any technical details and if it's truly open I'd expect it's requirements/methods to become public fact fairly quickly. The one thing I noted from reading around was that it's not possible to record live TV using the app; which would be achievable with Tvheadend providing some kind of intermediate role. No idea though.

    To be continued..

    Naturally I can no longer find the web page that told me it would switch between freely & aerial depending on stream / signal quality. It didn't really make sense when I read it anyway.

    Overall it seems a good way to track what people are watching. In my case it will get very confused. I record a fair number of films that the first 5 minutes of convince me not to watch the remainder.