So Andy... With your nice shiny suddenly new account with all of two posts in it...
Raising very real and legitimate concern about HDMI latency and switching issues that they've known about for months and tuner issues; as well as poor UI design which adds to the dysfunction is "banging on about nothing productive"?
I assume most readers have read the story of the Emperor's New Clothes?
For those that lack the attention-span.... Currys or Sony or whoever (which do you work for I wonder Andy) are - it's quite clearly evidenced - trying to fob off people with notions of problems with the advanced features of these sets being 'dealt with' in some future update... Even some nonsense where a retailer is trying to abdicate their responsibilities by claiming parts of the specification were 'linked information'...
The whole crux of ANY claim whereby you might return these sets is that they are not as described and not fit for purpose...
What's the basic purpose of a domestic television set?
Currys, sony or whoever can argue 'till they're blue in the face about HDD recording, YouView, Netflix or whatever not being 'advertised' etc etc etc...
But here I am - someone who knows their way around Audio-Visual equipment - telling the world that I've bought one of these sets, and I can't make it do very basic things...
i) Receive off-air broadcasts through its tuners in a way satisfactory/useable in a domestic setting.
ii) Switch input sources and feed them out to another piece of standard domestic equipment properly.
iii) Set the unit up in such away that the 'known-troublesome' features that might cause it to crash cannot be inadertently accessed.
iv) By dint of (iii) I cannot set the unit up to perform satisfactorily and remain stable in a normal domestic environment... i.e. when I'm out the house and there doesn't happen to be a trained technician on the premises if the set crashes my family can't be expected to be able to recover the set back to watchable condition.
- The situation at (iv) quite clearly makes the set unusable for the vast majority of people; and therefore inherently unfit for purpose. - Even on a very basic level.
Now, as you can imagine, 'other conversations' are going on elsewhere about this thread...
And to answer a couple of questions that have been put to me several times by Email now... YES! Anyone who finds themselves taking either Sony or a retailler to court over this is quite welcolme to cite me as a witness both on the basis of my professional backgound and experience as a disgruntled user of these sets... And NO! I don't now and never have worked for any equipment manufacturer or retailer. - I don't 'sell' or 'repair' TV sets!
To the retailers... I have SOME sympathy for the retailers caught up in this...Really this is Sony's [profanity removed] But trying your usual stunt of trying to palm people off (especially aimed at DSG) - and especially as I suspect having your 'social media' people start playing silly games on user forums... Grow up or this will backfire badly!
On the very basic point that these sets are inherently unstable; DEAL with it! - they cannot reliably be used for ordinary domestic viewing. - All the additional issue only serve to compound that. Really; you should not be selling these sets at all, and I'm suggesting to retailers firstly that they return their stock to Sony. And secondly - where a customer seeks a return; well I'm afraid the body of evidence is that they are unfit for the simplest intended purpose; watching TV at home! - Make things right for your customers! Take the bl00dy things back without quibble and refund or replace!
To Sony... Like the retailers... Bring your silly little kiddies into line! There is good evidence on THIS forum of people having their posts censored, that RIDICULOUSLY non-credible outage the other day, and now apparent attempts at shilling and setting your customers at each other's throats... These stunts don't work... Trying to discredit ME - someone who is presenting inconvenient truths from a position of some knowledge of these things? Seriously?? IS that REALLY the best you can do???
On the UI... ( And yes I'm repeating myself here) At one point I lectured in Multimedia Production which included User Interface Design - the UI of these sets is flawed on such a basic level that I'm suggesting to Sony here on this public forum that they really need to fire their design team. - I can assure you that such an interface would not even satisfy the HN1 level of any Scottish or English college course... And that IS pretty basic.
You need to take my suggestions on board... Offer a CORE firmware update which just gets the basic set working properly - and it shouldn't be at all difficult to get the HDD recording feature going in that. THEN deal with those let down by the lack of additional features. - Either exchange their sets for ones that work or (if as I suspect you just don't have any!) offer then free additional hardware - preferably with a sweetener in the form of a free year's subscription to whatever service these people use - or the option of a substantial discount to some other thing that might placate irate users...
All in all - between the kit I won't now be buying from Sony Broadcast - and the clients of mine I'll be 'warning off' Sony display products, I reckon I personally can cost you circa £250K this year... And you can consider that gone whatever happens! - But these sets are costing you customers... Customers with 20, 30, 40 years of buying power... How many millions in lost revenue is THAT?
To Sony's PR infants... You have an opportunity here to either destroy your brand or re-establish it as the 'gold standard' in terms of performance and customer care; your call!
MY set? - Currys... You sold mine with a 'free' 5-year guarantee... Which I'll be contacting you about soon. I propose giving Sony until Monday January the 18th to roll out an update that makes these sets at least basically operational... At that point ( assuming, as I suspect, they won't)I shall require you to uplift the set as 'unfit for purpose', and will consider your proposals as to what you might replace it with...
@mark-bo - Your comments echo almost exactly my own position. 40 years of brand loyalty seemingly means absolutely nothing to these people. As I previously wrote:
Unfortunately - and this is common these days - 'customer service' is more about frustrating the 'victim' until they just get fed up and go away..
https://community.sony.co.uk/t5/televisions/2015-bravia-android-tv-issues/td-p/1949079/highlight/fal...
I should have added to that; trying every dirty trick in the book to make the noisy ones shut up!
So much for the Japanese sense of 'honour'!
The latency issues need dealing with via an extra 'set up' item - not only must each input have its own picture delay but each surround mode too! The problems are worse on HD channels and even some shows because they have surround sound transmitted... Horrendous through the HDMI ports! - Just unwatchable!
Are you 'sending' your audio anywhere? Sound bar or A/V amp?
Note: Edited by Quinnicus to remove profanity above
