Installing Digiturk Play on a Samsung or LG television takes about ten minutes and needs nothing more than the TV, a home internet connection and your account details. On Samsung you download the app from the Apps section of Smart Hub, on LG from the LG Content Store, then you sign in with the email and password you used when you subscribed. Samsung sets running Tizen and LG sets running webOS from 2017 onwards are supported.
There is no satellite dish to mount, no receiver to ship over from Turkey and no technician to wait in for. The app runs inside the television itself, so the remote you already use every evening becomes the one that brings up beIN Sports, TRT 1 or the children's channels.
This guide walks through both brands step by step, explains what to check before you start, and covers the small problems that tend to appear on the first evening, usually ten minutes before a match. If your TV is older or the app will not appear in the store, there is a section for that too.
Before You Start: What Your TV and Home Network Need
Most frustration with a new app comes from something that has nothing to do with the app. So before you open the store, it is worth spending two minutes on the basics, because they decide whether the first evening is smooth or spent restarting the router.
The television comes first. Digiturk Play works on Samsung Smart TVs running Tizen and LG Smart TVs running webOS, made in 2017 or later. If you are not sure of your model year, the information is in the TV's settings under Support on Samsung or under General and About This TV on LG. Sets older than that may not show the app in the store at all, which is a limit of the TV's software rather than your account.
Then the connection. A full HD stream is comfortable at around 15 to 25 Mbps, and most home broadband plans in Europe and North America comfortably exceed that. The bigger issue is usually distance. A television two rooms away from the router on a crowded Wi-Fi channel will struggle on a Saturday night when the whole building is streaming, so if you can run a network cable to the TV, do it. It is the single most effective fix there is.
Finally, have your account ready. You need an active Digiturk Play subscription and the email address and password you registered with. If you have not subscribed yet, our guide to applying for Digiturk Play from abroad covers the address and payment steps, and the packages page shows the options side by side.
Installing Digiturk Play on a Samsung Smart TV
Samsung keeps its apps in Smart Hub, and once you know where the search sits, the whole process is shorter than the pre-match studio. The steps below apply to Tizen models from 2017 onwards. Menu names shift slightly between years, but the route is the same.
- Press the Home button on your Samsung remote to open Smart Hub.
- Go to Apps, usually shown as a grid of four squares on the left or along the bottom of the screen.
- Select the magnifying glass and type "Digiturk Play" with the on-screen keyboard.
- Choose the Digiturk Play app for viewers abroad from the results and press Install.
- When the download finishes, select Open, or press Add to Home so the app sits on your home row.
- Sign in with the email and password of your Digiturk Play account.
- Pick a channel and check the picture before the evening's match begins.
Typing an email address with a TV remote is nobody's idea of fun, so take it slowly and check the @ sign and the domain before you press confirm. Most failed first logins come from a single mistyped letter rather than a wrong password.
Once you are in, the app remembers you. Next time you press Home, Digiturk Play is on the row with your other apps, and opening it takes you straight to the live channels. If you ever want the full device overview, the Smart TV app page brings the essentials together in one place.
Installing Digiturk Play on an LG Smart TV
LG televisions run webOS, and the app comes from the LG Content Store, which newer models simply call Apps. The Magic Remote makes this part easier than on many other sets, because you can point at the screen instead of stepping through every tile. The process looks like this.
- Press the Home button on your LG remote to open the launcher bar.
- Open LG Content Store, or Apps on newer webOS versions.
- Select the search icon and type "Digiturk Play".
- Choose the Digiturk Play app for viewers abroad and select Install.
- If the TV asks you to sign in to an LG account first, complete that step, then return to the installation.
- Launch the app from the launcher bar once it has installed.
- Enter your Digiturk Play email and password, then open a channel to test the stream.
The LG account step catches a few people out. It is the television's own account for the store, not your Digiturk Play login, and the TV only asks for it once. If you set up the television recently and skipped it, this is where it comes back.
After the first login, you can move the app to the front of the launcher bar by holding it and dragging it left. It is a small thing, but on derby night, being one press away from beIN Sports instead of five makes the evening feel calmer.
Signing In and Setting Up the First Evening
The first time the app opens on your television is a good moment to look around before a match is actually on. Open a few channels, check how the picture settles in the first seconds, and get used to where the menus sit. It is much easier to learn the layout on a quiet Tuesday afternoon than with the whole family asking why the game has not started.
Live TV can be paused and rewound, which matters more abroad than it ever did at home. You can go back up to 24 hours on TRT 1, ATV, Kanal D, Star TV, Show TV and TV8, and up to 12 hours on the other channels. When an Istanbul kick-off lands in the middle of your working day, the match is still there from the first whistle when you get home. Our guide to watching Süper Lig matches from abroad shows how kick-off times fall in each country.
One account can be installed on as many devices as you like, but playback runs on one screen at a time. In practice that means agreeing in advance who gets the living room television on a match night. Starting a stream on a phone while the TV is playing will interrupt one of them, so it is worth making sure everyone in the house knows.
If you want to know exactly what you will find once you are signed in, the channel list shows the full line-up. Football households will spend most of their time on the beIN channels, and our guide to watching beIN Sports 1 live explains what a typical match day looks like on screen.
When the App Will Not Install or Open
Sometimes the search returns nothing, or the app installs and then refuses to load. It is maddening, especially when you have set aside the evening for a match, but the cause is almost always one of a handful of ordinary things.
If the app does not appear in the store at all, check the TV's software first. Both Samsung and LG hide apps from televisions running outdated system software, so go to the settings, look for Software Update or Support, and install anything waiting. Restart the television fully afterwards by unplugging it for a minute, because the standby button on most modern sets does not clear the memory. If your model is older than 2017, the store may simply not offer the app, and that is when a streaming stick becomes the sensible answer.
If the app installs but stays on a loading screen or shows a black picture, look at the connection before anything else. Restart the router, then the TV, and test again. A VPN running on the router or on a device in the house is another frequent culprit, because it can make your connection look as if it is coming from somewhere it is not. We explain why that causes trouble in Digiturk Play versus watching Turkish TV with a VPN.
If the sign-in fails, re-enter the email address slowly, then try logging in on your phone. If it works there, the problem is a typing error on the TV. If it fails everywhere, the issue is on the account side. Our list of fixes for when Digiturk Play is not working goes through the quick checks, and the customer service and contact guide shows how to reach the team when those do not solve it.
If Your TV Is Too Old for the App
An older television is not a reason to give up on watching Turkish TV on the big screen. The panel may still have years of life in it. What has fallen behind is the software inside, and that can be replaced for far less than the cost of a new set.
The easiest route is an Amazon Fire TV Stick plugged into a spare HDMI socket. It brings its own app store, its own remote and up-to-date software, and Digiturk Play runs on it exactly as it does on a modern Smart TV. Our Fire TV Stick installation guide takes you through it, and the Fire TV page covers the essentials.
If you already have an Android TV box or an Apple TV in the house, those work just as well. The Android TV app and the dedicated Apple TV app use the same account, and your subscription moves with you between devices without any extra setup.
What we would not recommend is shipping an old satellite receiver from Turkey. It is tied to a domestic contract and a satellite footprint that does not reach most of the world, and our answer to whether the Digiturk box works abroad explains why it rarely ends well.
Getting the Best Picture on Match Night
The app does its part, but the television's own settings decide a lot about how a match actually looks. A few minutes in the picture menu can make the difference between a sharp derby and a slightly smeared one.
Start with motion smoothing. Samsung calls it Auto Motion Plus and LG calls it TruMotion, and both are switched on by default on many sets. For football it can help with fast passes, but it also gives series and films an artificial, overly smooth look. Many viewers keep it on a low setting for sport and turn it off for everything else, and picture modes make that easy to switch.
Then think about the room. A bright afternoon window behind the sofa will wash out the screen far more than any setting, which matters if you are in a time zone where Süper Lig matches arrive at lunchtime. Drawing a curtain sounds trivial, but it is the cheapest picture upgrade available.
Most of all, protect the connection on the nights that matter. Pause large downloads, ask whoever is gaming upstairs to wait until half-time, and if your router supports it, give the television priority. For the biggest night of the season, our guide to watching the GS and FB derby abroad is worth reading before kick-off.
Testing Everything Free Before You Commit
If you are not yet a subscriber, there is a straightforward way to see how the app behaves on your own television before paying anything. New users can try the Family Package free for three days through Digiturk Play Free to Try, with no credit card and no commitment.
Three days is enough to install the app on your Samsung or LG, test the picture on your own internet connection and see how the evenings feel with Turkish channels back in the living room. Everything in the Family Package is included apart from the live matches of the three biggest Süper Lig clubs. When the trial ends, you can move to a paid plan at a discount using the same login, so the app on your TV keeps working without a fresh installation.
When you are ready to choose, the sports package is built around beIN Sports and every Süper Lig weekend, while the family package covers series, news, films and Turkish-language kids' channels. Seasonal offers appear on the campaigns page, and smaller questions are answered in the FAQs.
In short, putting Digiturk Play on a Samsung or LG television is one of the simplest things you can do to bring home a little closer. Find the app in your TV's store, sign in once, and from then on the Saturday match, the evening series and the news from Turkey are a single press of the remote away, on the biggest screen in the house.
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