Samsung sneakily opened up its free TV streaming service to all

Samsung TV Plus is a TV streaming service that lets Samsung smart TV owners watch live TV channels for free. Initially, the service was exclusive to Samsung smart TVs, but that changed last year when the South Korean electronics giant brought it to mobile and tablets. Samsung also expanded the service to multiple markets, including India, earlier this year. But one hurdle remained: you must own a Samsung smart TV or a Galaxy smartphone to access this free TV streaming service. But that’s no longer the case.

Samsung TV Plus is now open to everyone through the web interface, Protocol reports. It’s a bit of old news, though. Samsung actually launched the web version of TV Plus in May, but it flew under the radar because the company didn’t have any formal announcement to go with it. Samsung confirmed to Protocol that they indeed launched the web version of TV Plus in Q2 2021.

What this means is users in select countries can now access Samsung TV Plus regardless of whether they own a Samsung device or not. Anyone with a web browser can now go to samsungtvplus.com and start streaming live TV channels over the internet. The service is completely free (ad-supported), and many channels can be streamed right away without signing in or creating a Samsung account.

The web interface doesn’t appear to be available in every single country where the Samsung TV Plus is offered. It’s not available in India yet, for example. Samsung also added the ability to cast videos to Google Chromecast-enabled devices to its mobile app earlier this month.

The service offers more than 140 channels in the US, including CBS News, Vice, ABC News Live, PBS Kids, Bloomberg TV+, Vevo, USA Today, and more.

Samsung TV Plus has been a success among Samsung smart TV owners. Samsung says the service is currently installed on more than 50 million smart TVs worldwide and streams “billions of minutes every month.”

Expansion of Samsung TV Plus outside Samsung’s ecosystem will put the service in direct competition to other similar streaming services such as Peacock and Roku Channel.

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