The era of the Free Player Devialet is coming to an end: sudden disappearance or early retirement?

The Free Devialet Player, born of a collaboration between Free and Devialet, mysteriously disappears from the Free site. Launched in 2018, this box, associated with the Freebox Delta, has revolutionized the landscape of multimedia boxes with its six speakers, including three dedicated to bass, and cutting-edge technologies for impeccable sound quality.

A wind of nostalgia is blowing on the web: the famous Player Free Devialet has mysteriously disappeared from the Free site. It was in 2018 that this hybrid creation, the result of a collaboration between Free and Devialet, made its debut in our living rooms. His imposing presence next to the television could not leave anyone indifferent.

Free

Freebox Delta

Product sheet

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Available at 40 €

The Player Free Devialet, associated with the Freebox Delta and its server, was a revolution in the multimedia box landscape. In addition to its TV box functionalities, it is truly its sound bar dimension that has made an impression. Six loudspeakers skillfully distributed around this player box, including three dedicated to bass specially designed by Devialet.

To ensure impeccable sound quality, electronic signal processing and amplification stages were integrated, state-of-the-art for the time. The system also had spatialization technology Space, creating immersive sound from a single speaker. To complete the picture, an algorithm Adaptive Volume Level (AVL) used to automatically compress the volume.

However, this technological feat suffered from multiple difficulties during its launch, like many Free products. Between the bugs and the missing functionalities, the Player Free Devialet was not able to convince of its practicality. It was necessary to have a television hung on the wall to fully exploit the acoustics of the product and above all to avoid confining it to a piece of furniture, otherwise the sound spatialization would be limited.

There are already alternatives at Free

Despite his departure from the Free site, the Player Free Devialet could well continue his solo career. It already takes on the role of Alexa speaker and is equipped with popular applications such as Netflix or YouTube.

As a reminder, it was available for rental at 9.99 euros per month (since April 2023) or a purchase at 480 euros. As a replacement, Free now offers Player Pop on Android TV. Less complete than its predecessor, it is nevertheless forward-looking with its compatibility extended to all applications available on the Google Play Store. There’s also the Apple TV 4K, sold by Free with the Oqee app.