Product Support

Why doesn't Manhattan make a Freely recorder?

We don’t, and here’s why a Freely record­er doesn’t really make sense:

Broad­casters don’t allow streamed con­tent to be recor­ded. That’s a Freely plat­form lim­it­a­tion. To record, you’d need an aer­i­al for Freeview — mean­ing a hybrid box would need both broad­band and an aerial.

But Freely pri­or­it­ises the aer­i­al when both are con­nec­ted, mean­ing worse pic­ture qual­ity on most chan­nels and no live pause func­tion­al­ity. You’d also need two sep­ar­ate TV Guides since Freely doesn’t sup­port set­ting recordings.

Rather than mak­ing one awk­ward hybrid that does neither thing well, we’ve made two focused products:

• Want to record, pause, and rewind? The T4‑R gives you full con­trol via your aer­i­al. Con­nect it to broad­band and you also get all the UK catch-up apps.
• Want stream­ing sim­pli­city with no aer­i­al? The Aero gives you Freely plus all your stream­ing apps in one place. Fast chan­nel changes, great pic­ture qual­ity, any room with Wi-Fi.

Dif­fer­ent tools for dif­fer­ent needs.