Ah, Vodafone. British readers will almost certainly have heard of the telecommunications giant, and may even be a customer of the company’s internet, mobile and SIM plans.
It’s not often, however, that Vodafone appears on the hallowed pages of What Hi-Fi?, other than, perhaps, in some crossover with our smartphone coverage.
But it looks as though that’s about to change as, for the first time (in the UK, at least), Vodafone is following the likes of EE and Virgin by expanding into the home streaming market with Vodafone TV, an all-in-one 4K TV box.
It’s a big move from the long-running brand that could potentially upset the streaming-device market as well as our Awards recommendations, which are currently dominated by heavyweights such as Apple, Amazon and Sky.
We spoke to Vodafone’s Consumer Director Rob Winterschladen to see what prompted this new venture, how Vodafone TV plans to stand out from the tough competition and which cloud game ate up entire weekends of his life.
From the small screen to the big(ger) screen
So why the move from smartphones and into people’s living rooms now?
Well, Vodafone is certainly aware that competitors have invested in TV streaming over the past few years – especially as television and the internet have become increasingly intertwined and traditional aerial broadcasting continues to decline.
“It’s a part of our portfolio which we’ve been missing,” says Winterschladen, who also points to the launch of premium network plan Vodafone SuperMobile for streaming on the go via the Vodafone TV app.
“We think now’s the right time, especially with what we’ve been launching on SuperMobile and that out-of-home streaming experience that SuperMobile delivers, to bring the two things to market together," Winterschladen continues.
And they’re not messing about – Winterschladen assures me that picture and sound quality are key considerations, with support for 4K, Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos.
“It was a really big part of what we wanted to do,” Winterschladen says. “We wanted to have a product that we felt was the best out there in the market and able to compete with the likes of Apple TV and Sky Stream.”
Tough competition
Talking of Sky and Apple, the streaming device market is perhaps not crowded, but the competition is certainly tough.
The Award-winning Sky Stream is Vodafone’s closest competition with its dish-free TV access and streaming service bundles, but the five-star Apple TV 4K and Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Max (2nd gen) are also compelling subscription-free alternatives.
So can Vodafone carve out its own niche? Much will depend on the yet-to-be-announced pricing, but it has a few aces up its sleeve.
First up is Freely for live TV over the internet, a feature the subscription-free devices lack.
This allows Vodafone TV to “combine live TV with all the apps you want”, with the ability to “aggregate everything into one place, one interface”. Winterschladen points out that the menu includes live channels as well as content from Vodafone’s partners Netflix and HBO Max together, with other services also available. This also helps reduce the long tail of TVs reliant on an aerial for live TV, with Freely available only on select smart TVs released from 2024 onwards.
Sky Stream does, of course, come with live TV and its enviable lineup of channels. So how can the Vodafone TV stand out there?
“We’ve got all the other apps that you can get through the Google Play Store, not just limited to TV, so you’ve got things like Spotify in there,” says Winterschladen.
“And there are some other TV products out there in the marketplace from competitors, which are closed ecosystems, right? So one of the nice things is you can go into the Google Play Store, you can bring in all these apps, and some of our competitors don’t like to do that because it’s closed within their ecosystem.”
So, as well as the usual streaming apps and audio services such as Spotify, the Google Play Store also allows access to games, much like you do on Android phones.
However, Vodafone’s gaming ambitions don't end there. The telecom giant has teamed up with Netgem to offer 302 console-level cloud games, all for no extra cost. And there is one in particular Winterschladen has enjoyed…
“Part of the reason we stuck in the flash memory and the 3GB of RAM was to allow us to be able to have that really nice immersive gaming experience," he says.
“I have literally wasted weekends on something called Karate Survivor. It’s like the 1980s and it’s retro, so the graphics are deliberately a bit pixely. I’m going to go try that in a minute when we finish.”
Our TV and AV editor will review the Vodafone TV over the coming days as part of our Awards process, where it will be up against previous winners as well as newcomers such as the Manhattan Aero 4K TV, a subscription-free Freely streamer. We are excited to see some competition, at least, in the relatively sparsely populated streaming box market, where Vodafone’s Freely and subscription combination provides a promising alternative to Sky.
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