Sony Branded Me as Incompetent

[Pat100]

I wrote a review of my new Sony KD-55XG9505 TV. Sony added their comments to my review, suggesting that the weaknesses in their system which I mentioned did not exist and were down to my incompetence. 

In fact, their comments are incorrect. These weaknesses do exist and the “help” that they offered does not fix them. They even admit to them in their own documentation. 

My review:

http://www.haggistogo.com/public/review.pdf

(And their comments)

Here is their own (very well hidden) documentation explaining that screen size settings are, in truth, unavailable on 4K HDMI input:

“Article ID : 00204640 / Last Modified : 27/06/2019

Why can't I change the Wide Mode Settings on Sony's Android TV?

Applicable Products and Categories of This Article

Applicable Products

Televisions & Projectors

Android TVs (BRAVIA OLED)

Android TVs (BRAVIA)

This may occur on your TV due to the following:

Wide mode settings aren't available during a 4K playback from an external device such as a Blu-ray Disc™ player, game console, etc.”

(Access to wide mode settings is necessary for zooming)

Regarding CEC sync, there is no setting: “Allow External device to turn off TV set” 

Looking at Sony Android’s history, I see that CEC misbehaved on many early implementations so I guess that Sony “fixed” it by simply disabling that CEC option in their CEC implementation. 

I’m annoyed that Sony simply whitewashed these problems and suggested that I was wrong by offering solutions that don’t exist. They should own up to Android’s shortcomings and not try to rubbish anyone who finds fault with their product. 

These missing features existed on my Toshiba and Samsung sets. 

Has anyone else had their reviews whitewashed?

[IamNic]

Hello @Pat100,

since I don't know the site you are linking to and the URL to your "review" leads to some sort of PDF file, I am not going to open it. 

Kindly post a screenshot of the review here.

- Nic

[Pat100]

[IamNic]

Hello @Pat100,

thank you for providing the screenshot.

I don't really see where Sony accuses you of "incompetence" - the person replying to your review maybe just misunderstood the issues you describe in your review and tried to help by linking to the support articles.

Why not post about the issues you are heaving here (preferrably as three seperate threads) to see if someone knows a solution/workaround?

- Nic

[rooobb]

AFAIK there is not a feature in CEC that gives control to an attached device to switch off the TV, but only the other way round. Some devices (like Skyq or BD/DVD player) has a TV power off button that should be configured for the TV brand that can send directly the command to switch off via IR not CEC. No zoom feature on 4k input is available on Sony

[royabrown2]

@rooobb 

Methinks @Pat100 doth protest too much.....

But the CEC command in question is 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_Electronics_Control

• System Standby enables users to switch multiple devices to standby mode with the press of one button

so there is such a feature, which I guess the ATV has to implement as sender, and the TV implement as sink, if this is to work.

Perhaps @Pat100 can kindly tell us how to invoke this feature on the ATV; it would certainly be wrong to expect just putting the ATV in standby to invoke this, as you might be watching some other device, or planning to.

Whether devices that can act as sink in this case also have a setting to toggle on and off their responding to it sounds desirable but not mandatory.

Now I have to manually copy those bit.ly references and see what Sony have to say about CEC....

[rooobb]

@royabrown2  the description you are referring to is quite ambiguous since it doesn't explicitly  indicate in which direction has to be meant. 

The way it is implemented on Sony TV (and AFAIK everywhere) is the switching off the TV it can switch off all the CEC devices connected. Not the other way round.

IMHO it makes sense in this way, since if you switch off the TV you are not able to use any device attached anymore while if you switch off a player you ay just want to use another device or see a dbvt channel or whatever.

I do not want to refer to sony devices (because they may have been engineered to workaround a missing functionality) but how do you explain i.e. Skyq power off button that pressed for few seconds switch off the tv... it is not useful if it is meant to be switched off automatically.

[royabrown2]

@rooobb 

The description is ambiguous, I agree, as it does not differentiate between sources and sinks, which as you say need to work differently. And I said much the same as you about this in my posting.

If CEC was smarter, it could work for a source device to turn the sink TV off - if it knew there was nothing else using it. I turn on my YouView box, and it turns on the TV and switches to the YouView input. But when I switch the YouView box off again, it leaves the TV on, and still set to the YouView input.

But I could wish it put things back how they were when I switched it off, unless the TV had noted some manual changes in the meantime.

[rooobb]

@royabrown2 this was as SCART worked if I remember well those old time, but I don't know if it is in the CEC specification....

[royabrown2]

@rooobb 

The thing with SCART was that it was never much more than devices pulling a pin up to say if they were there or not.

But the great thing about SCART was that it was designed to be bidirectional, so a VCR could be both sink and source, depending. Though there were exceptions to this as new standard usages proliferated.

And HDMI went unidirectional from the start; only after several years did the penny drop that bidirectional audio was needed (ARC), and even now, you have to use the (probably) one HDMI port on the TV that supports this. And only now, and with great fanfare, eARC, to make the return channel as capable as it needs to be.

I used to like the bad old days, running my Sony surround amp to and from my 26” 4:3 Sony Trinitron TV, with the original Sony manual telling me how to wire it up, and a sheet in the box from Sony UK telling me to wire it differently, and me wiring it a third way, to suit how I wanted to use it 🙂