Freesat and YouTube have partnered up to provide the online video network’s app to owners of the premium Free Time set-top box.
Freesat is a free-to-air digital satellite television service in the UK that is supported by both the BBC and ITV. Its Free Time internet-connected set-top box, priced at stg£279, comes with access to 180 traditional channels and access to on-demand players from the BBC and ITV.
The YouTube app is already available in living rooms via smart TVs and other set-top boxes, such as the Apple TV, but the Freesat partnership will bring this to an even wider audience. To date, Freesat has sold 3m products and reached 55,000 new households in the UK in Q3 2012 with the launch of Free Time last autumn.
Free Time is based on a number of open standards and technologies, such as Open IPTV Forum (OIPF), Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV (HbbTV) and HTML5, and the majority of its interface was built using the latter.
The YouTube app will be added to Free Time in March and on-demand players 4oD and Demand 5 are also expected to be added this year.
