Customers who buy a Smart TV from Samsung’s latest 2020/2021 range, will get free extended trials to several streaming services, such as BritBox, YouTube Premium, Rakuten and more.
The offers are worth over £200, but most of them (except for the Rakuten offer) are only for new customers – so if you already have an account with one of the participating streaming services – you won’t get the free months.
According to research conducted by Samsung, 89% of their customers are interested in getting offers and streaming services to use on their new TVs.
Therefore, Samsung are launching their new “Smart Start” platform, which is basically a promotional hub that introduces customers to a variety of services – with coupons for extended free trials.
The Smart Start platform will be ongoing, so new offers might be added in the future. For now, these are the available offers:
Rakuten TV: 5 Free 4K Rentals – Rakuten is a ‘streaming store’ available on multiple platforms – including Samsung TVs. With this offer, you can get credits for up to 5 free Ultra HD streaming rentals.
BritBox UK: 3 Free Months – The streaming service from ITV and the BBC (see our BritBox review) holds a big collection of classic (and modern) British TV shows and films.
The free offer is only available to NEW BritBox customers – so if you were ever subscribed, or used the free trial, you’re not eligible again (though if you have more people with a debit/credit card in your household, you can always open a new account).
Remember that once the three free months are up, your subscription will continue and you will be automatically charged – so don’t forget to cancel if you don’t want it.
YouTube Premium – 3 Free Months: YouTube’s Premium tier gives you several perks, such as being able to watch every video on YouTube without adverts, plus the ability to play music from YouTube with your phone’s screen turned off.
Again, this offer is only available to NEW YouTube Premium subscribers – so if you’ve ever used it, you’re not eligible.
TIDAL: 4 Free Months of Tidal HiFi – Tidal is a music streaming service that offers two music quality tiers – Premium (at 320 kbit/s), and HiFi (CD Quality music). The Samsung offer gives you 4 months of the HiFi tier – for new users only.
Fiit: 3 Free Months – Fiit is an interactive workout streaming service, with 700+ workout videos of yoga, pilates, strength and more. The offer gives you 3 free months – but it’s only for new users.
How To Get The Samsung ‘Smart Start’ Offers
To get all these offers, you first need to buy an eligible Samsung TV from the 2020/2021 range between now and January 6, 2022.
Then, you need to find the ‘Samsung Promotion’ app on your TV’s launcher bar.
Finally, you need to connect to your Samsung account (or create one), at which point you will be able to get the promotional codes for each of the separate offers.
Note that once you activate the promotions for each service, you can use those services anywhere (so on other devices where they’re available – such as mobile phones and streaming devices), and not just on your Samsung TV.
Samsung Electronics UK Head of TV/AV Retail & Content Services, Deep Halder, had this to say about the promotion:
“We’re delighted to partner with such iconic brands for this promotion and offer our customers the opportunity to elevate their at-home entertainment experience to a premium level.
Over the last 18 months, we’ve seen the role of the TV in the home shift significantly, with people now relying on their TVs more than ever before. This makes this partnership and promotion all the more worthwhile.
“In an increasingly crowded market of streaming services, we hope Smart Start will allow our partners to stand out and showcase their services in a way that is integrated with how our customers start their Smart TV journey.”
Well I’ve got a brand new Samsung Smart TV with the offers as described. But after I reset it the Rakuten App disappeared and is not available in the App store to be reinstalled.
So now I’ve got free Rakuten movies, but no way to watch them. Contacted both Samsung and Rakuten but the tech support aren’t planning to try to make the app available again.
You can take these inducements to buy with a pinch of salt.
I’ll be sarcastic and say that Samsung probably won’t be offering subscriptions to channels that have much Dolby Vision content.