Samsung TV / videos / IL GLOBO TV
REVIEW
Il Globo brings Italian-Australian community TV to Samsung Tizen.
The diaspora-press fixture extends its newspaper brand into a free Tizen channel — Italian-language programming for the community Il Globo has covered in Melbourne for seventy years.
BY THE APP COMRADE DESK · MAY 10, 2026 · 3 MIN READ
IL GLOBO TV
SEI VIC PTY LTD (IL GLOBO)
OUR SCORE
6.9
SAMSUNG TV
★ —
PRICE
Free
Il Globo has been the Italian-language paper of record for Australia’s Italian community since 1959 — first as a Melbourne weekly, then a national broadsheet, then a bi-weekly across Victoria, New South Wales, and South Australia. Its readership is the post-war migration generation and their grandchildren, the people who keep an Italian kitchen radio on while a Samsung TV plays in the next room. The Tizen channel is the publisher’s attempt to put the same editorial voice on that TV.
The channel is small, free, and recent. It launched in March 2026 and reflects a community broadcaster’s resources rather than a global streamer’s. The programming is Italian-language news, cultural segments, and feature clips drawn from the same editorial pipeline that fills the newspaper. There is no subscription, no signup, and no cast handoff — the channel runs on Samsung TVs and only Samsung TVs, for an audience that probably already owns one.
This is not a streaming app to compare against Netflix or RAI’s own broadcast portal. It is a community-press product extending into smart TV. Judged against that brief — diaspora language, a known masthead, free distribution, no friction — it works. Judged against general-purpose Italian streaming, it does not, and is not trying to.
Il Globo TV is a community broadcaster's TV-app extension, and on those terms it is exactly what it should be — free, Italian, and unmistakably Melbourne-anchored.
FEATURES
Il Globo TV is the Samsung Tizen channel from SEI VIC Pty Ltd, the Melbourne-based publisher behind the Il Globo newspaper — the masthead that has served Australia's Italian-speaking community since the 1950s. The Tizen app extends the brand into a free, ad-supported broadcast channel aimed at the same audience.
Programming leans on Italian-language news bulletins, community segments, cultural features, and clips pulled from the publisher's editorial pipeline. The app is free and does not require an account, which is the right default for a community-press product where friction kills uptake among the older end of the diaspora viewership.
Tizen-specific behaviour is light. The remote's directional pad navigates a single-column lineup, the back button returns to the channel grid, and Bixby voice search is not wired to in-channel content. There is no companion phone app and no cast handoff — playback starts and ends on the TV.
The channel is currently Australia-region by intent, although Tizen's regional gating is loose enough that an Italian household elsewhere can usually still install it from the Samsung TV store. Release is recent — the listing dates to early 2026 — and the catalogue depth reflects that.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Showing up at all is the achievement. Diaspora-language broadcast on smart-TV platforms is a thin field; the alternatives for an Italian-Australian household watching on a Samsung set tend to be SBS On Demand's Italian-language slate, the occasional RAI livestream over a VPN, or YouTube channels uploaded by community organisations. A free Tizen channel with Il Globo's editorial fingerprint sits in a category most national community publishers haven't entered.
The Italian-language UX is unambiguous — menus, titles, and on-screen text are Italian-first, which is the right call for the audience and an honest signal to anyone else browsing the channel grid. The free tier with no signup means a grandparent in Reservoir or Carlton can install it and watch without help.
ROOM TO IMPROVE
Catalogue depth is the constraint. A March-2026 launch with a small editorial team means the lineup is shallower than the audience this brand commands in print — a few daily news bulletins, some recurring segments, and a thin library of features. Heavier viewers will exhaust new programming inside a session.
Stream quality is competent rather than impressive. The encode is 1080p maximum on the bulletins available at review, with visible compression on motion-heavy footage and an audio bed that drops into mono on older clips. No HDR pipeline, no Dolby Atmos passthrough — appropriate for the content type but worth knowing if you are coming from a Netflix-tier expectation.
Discovery is bare. There is no schedule grid, no per-show pages, no episode descriptions long enough to preview what you are about to watch. A community broadcaster does not need a Netflix recommendation engine, but a printed program calendar — the kind Il Globo's newspaper readers already understand — would close the gap.
CONCLUSION
Install Il Globo TV if you are part of the Italian-Australian community that already reads the masthead, or if you keep an Italian-speaking household member's Samsung TV stocked with diaspora content. Skip it if you are looking for Italian programming generally — RAI's own apps and SBS On Demand carry deeper catalogues. The bet here is that Il Globo's editorial voice is worth the install on its own terms. For its audience, it is.