A year after the announcement of the Freebox Ultra, Free subscribers are wondering what the ISP has in store for 2025. According to Tino-X83, well-known in the Free community for his advance information, Xavier Niel's firm is working on a new Freebox Player. The new box would be called "Freebox Super Player" and would accompany the current Freebox Ultra.
Freebox Super Player for "super" performance?
It would integrate an ARMv8 chip into 5 cores clocked at 2.02 GHz, as well as 4 GB of RAM. This 5-core configuration is probably, but it is at least surprising. Most ARMv8 SoCs adopt a big.LITTLE architecture with a variable number of cores and this is often even. Nevertheless, Free's choice is entirely possible and would also offer a higher level of power than what the operator currently offers. The whole thing would run under Google's Android 14 operating system rather than using an in-house solution. A choice that is obviously not insignificant and would allow the TV player to access a large catalog of applications.
Last year, Xavier Niel announced exclusively to Univers Freebox that a new player was on the way for the Freebox Ultra. The founder mentioned the difficulties of innovating on the TV box, but stated that his teams are working "on specific features or things that should please you".
Now that Free has unveiled its Freebox Pro and the Freebox Ultra occupies the high-end segment, the ISP has every interest in offering a "player" at the level of its server. Remember that the subscription to the Freebox Ultra (49.99 euros for 1 year, then 59.99 euros/month) includes a complete TV offer with more than 280 channels included. These include the TV by Canal channels, Canal+ La chaîne en livre and Universal+, but also Netflix (Standard with ads), Prime Video and Disney+ (Standard with ads).
Currently, it is the Free 4K TV Player launched in 2020 with the Freebox Pop that accompanies the Freebox v9. It also runs on Android, like the Free 4K Player from 2015, while the Devialet player ran on the Freebox Player OS.
When will the Freebox Super Player be released?
Officially, Free has not addressed the subject of a new box to accompany its Freebox Ultra. We expect that the Freebox Super Player will arrive in the course of 2025. As indicated by the specialist site Univers Freebox, it could “not be solely dedicated to Freebox Ultra subscribers” and other boxes could benefit from it.
0 Comments