Samsung TV Plus app, which will allow Samsung smart TV and smartphone users to watch select TV channels for free, was launched in India on Wednesday, March 31. The ad-supported service is available in 13 other countries including the US, the UK, and Canada, and also includes on-demand content apart from free live TV channels. The Samsung TV Plus service is now live in India across the company’s smart TV models launched in 2017 and later. The service for Samsung Galaxy smartphones is expected to begin in April.
The company says that Samsung TV Plus brings content across genres including news, lifestyle, technology, gaming and science, sports, music, and movies. It currently offers 27 local and global channels, but Samsung says that more partners will be on-boarded soon. Users won’t need to sign up for any subscriptions to access the content via the free service. Samsung had first announced that the service will be launched in India in December last year.
The current list of free channels includes 9XM, 9X Jalwa for local music, and Qwest TV Jazz & Beyond, Qwest TV Classical, and Qwest TV Mix for global music. Global lifestyle channels include The Q, Insight TV, Fuel TV, and Wonder, among others. Republic TV and Republic Bharat are the only two news channels supported currently. You can refer to the full list of supported channels on the Samsung India website.
Samsung TV Plus comes pre-installed on supported Samsung smart TV models. Users can find the service by navigating to Samsung TV Plus app using the app bar located at the bottom of their smart TV screens. One can simply click on Smart TV Plus to begin watching the content. It also has a Guide that tells users what’s on and what’s coming next. The Recommended section lists the top channels available for free with the service. One can also delete channels from the list or remove the Smart TV Plus app entirely from their supported TVs. The service can be restored by performing a Smart Hub reset on the TVs.
Samsung says that most Galaxy smartphones will support the service in India but has not shared a complete list yet. Supported phones in the US include Samsung Galaxy S21, Galaxy S20, as well as Galaxy Note 20 series. The Smart TV Plus app can be download from the Google Play store as well as the Samsung Galaxy Store, and will start working on smartphones sometime in April.
Is Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra the most complete Android phone yet? We discussed this on Orbital, the Gadgets 360 podcast. Orbital is available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you get your podcasts.
