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Sony Accused of Censoring Negative Feedback On Its Bravia TVs Ahead of Black Fri (ibtimes.co.uk)

Posted by msmash on from the stranger-things dept.

An anonymous reader writes: Disgruntled owners of Sony's Bravia televisions have accused the company of "censoring" its community forums by preventing users from reporting technical issues. Several users say the company has locked threads containing complaints about its 4K televisions to suppress negative feedback in the run-up to the high-spending season. One of the threads removed by Sony contained 90 pages-worth of reports of input lag issues affecting its 2016 line of ultra-high definition (UHD) Bravia sets. The thread is titled, "Buyers beware, it looks almost the entire 4K 'HDR capable' TV line up from Sony are trash for 4K and HDR gaming" and clicking on the link now brings up an empty page with the error message: "the topic you are trying to access is not available."

40 comments

  1. My experience with a Sony TV was absolutely by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    the comment you are trying to access is not available.

    1. Re:My experience with a Sony TV was absolutely by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      try a joke thats actually funny - fuckwit

      Good of you to sign your post, AC.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  2. Black Fri by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My god.

    They got Slashdot too!

    1. Re: Black Fri by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Slashdot prefers Cyber Mon.

    2. Re:Black Fri by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Black Friday should go hang.

  3. My Sony Bravia TV had an interesting story, when w by slazzy · · Score: 3, Funny

    the comment you are trying to access is not available.

    --
    Website Just Down For Me? Find out
  4. Karma by NaCh0 · · Score: 1

    If you buy sony, you are part of the problem.

    Their stuff never works as well as expected unless you go way up into the pro series. Even then, it's a dirty feeling to give them any money and should be avoided.

    1. Re: Karma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      in my personal experience, sony stuff works reasonably well for it's price and has a tolerable user-interface. compared to samsung-crap which might have great hardware but is unusable due to rotten software an user interfaces, - and mostly looks cheap - i'll take sony every time.

    2. Re: Karma by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This, not only my samsung remote stopped working right after warrranty ended, the TV also takes ages to turn-on (non-smart TV) , the speakers are absymal and the headphone jack is unreliable garbage.

    3. Re:Karma by The-Ixian · · Score: 1

      Just like any other electronics company, they have winners and they have losers. It all just depends on the product team and other factors.

      I used to have an RCA boombox that was a thing of engineering beauty. It sounded great, it looked great, it was powerful and had high end features. After such a great experience I bought a few more RCA products and realized pretty much everything else they made was crap. That boombox was a flash in the pan winner for that company.

      I am sure it is the same for Sony.

      My dad was a Sony die-hard. I remember when we bought the big Sony Trinitron television in the '80s. It was huge and it had wheels! But that tank lasted for probably 20 years before it started to show problems.

      I don't have much experience with current Sony products because I, like you apparently, don't like the company all that much.

      --
      My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
    4. Re:Karma by LocalH · · Score: 1

      RCA was once a stalwart. They were influential in the development of radio technology as used in the US, and they were the first in the US with NTSC color televisions. Now they've been reduced to a budget brand. Sad, really.

      --
      FC Closer
    5. Re: Karma by scdeimos · · Score: 1

      I second this. Samsung is completely crap at providing firmware updates their TVs and Bluray players to fix fundamental issues with their software. e.g.: Typically the audio and video formats supported in the user manual only work over USB-connected storage - I've never once had a Samsung product able to decode all allegedly supported formats over an "AllShare" network connection.

    6. Re:Karma by farble1670 · · Score: 1

      Just like any other electronics company, they have winners and they have losers. It all just depends on the product team and other factors.

      That misses the point. All companies have hits and misses, but brushing problems under the digital rug is reprehensible, especially when it can factor into a consumer's decision to spend $2,000.

      If you even found the thread it means you were searching for things like "sony bravia gaming" or "sony bravia gaming lag" etc. Consumers that don't care about response times would never see it. For the (probably small) subset of consumers that do care, they've hidden pertinent information that would have factored into their choice.

    7. Re: Karma by vux984 · · Score: 3, Informative

      I'm not even sure why you would want to. Run a dumb HDMI cable into it from something that is competent, turn off any lag inducing image processing, and then other than on and off...I pretty much forget it even has any other capabilities.

      I'm buying a TV for the screen. That's it. I don't care what else it does, and I certainly don't expect some piece of shit embedded apps to be worth anything new out of the box, let alone 5-10-15 years later.

  5. Why is input lag still a thing? by GerbilSoft · · Score: 1

    Almost all PC LCD monitors I've used, even going back to the Dell 1701FP from the early 2000s, has had minimal input lag (usually attributed to LCD response time). Why is it that so many LCD and OLED HDTVs have ridiculous amounts (60ms+) of input lag? OLED in particular doesn't even have the LCD response time excuse.

    Do the manufacturers think people *like* input lag and intentionally increase it on products marketed as TVs or something?

    1. Re:Why is input lag still a thing? by slazzy · · Score: 1

      Maybe so people will upgrade to a "pro" model they add some lag?

      --
      Website Just Down For Me? Find out
    2. Re:Why is input lag still a thing? by darkain · · Score: 3, Informative

      The primary reason has to deal with all the image processing bullshit that the displays have. On some models, disabling the display manipulation and filtering bullshit will get rid of the input lag, on others it wont.

    3. Re:Why is input lag still a thing? by xlsior · · Score: 1

      Do the manufacturers think people *like* input lag and intentionally increase it on products marketed as TVs or something?

      It's post-processing like resolution upscaling / image interpolation / temporal smoothing / etc. that all add overhead and may need several video frames of data to cross-reference, leading to lag. When you're watching a static stream of video (e.g. TV or a movie) that delay is irrelevant, but it can kill real-time applications like video games.

      On many displays those 'enhancements' can be disabled all but removing the lag in the process.

    4. Re:Why is input lag still a thing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Seriously, this is my biggest issue when buying a display. And since there are no HDR PC monitors or affordable ones at 55"+ I can't get one of those for gaming.

    5. Re:Why is input lag still a thing? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's just bad software design, though. You'd be surprised at how many effects can be coded into a single pass of vertex/geometry/fragment shaders just using uniform variables to switch individual effects on/off. If they're not using an OpenGL-like system on their display frontend they're bloody idiots.

    6. Re:Why is input lag still a thing? by farble1670 · · Score: 1

      Do the manufacturers think people *like* input lag and intentionally increase it on products marketed as TVs or something?

      Image processing. HDR. Upscaling. Etc. Most high-ish end modern TVs will have a "gaming mode" that turns this off. I'm too lazy to understand the actual problem w/ Sony.

    7. Re:Why is input lag still a thing? by KozmoStevnNaut · · Score: 1

      But that requires a lot of processing power, which manufacturers don't want to put into their TVs.

      Input lag doesn't matter for movies or other non-interactive content. It doesn't matter that there's a ~60ms lag to pause a movie.

      However, it does matter with gaming, which is why "gaming mode" on most modern TVs turns off most of the image processing to reduce the lag.

      --
      Eat the rich.
    8. Re:Why is input lag still a thing? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      Most high-ish end modern TVs will have a "gaming mode" that turns this off.

      There is usually still some lag in game mode, but on my Samsung, for example, it goes from approx 100ms to approx 40ms when you switch.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  6. Reddit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The frontpage of marketing fluff.

  7. Why does this not surprise me? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    This does not surprise me at all considering Sony's past history of rootkits, removing features of devices with "updates", trying to control what customers could do with their purchased products, and generally screwing their customers in pretty much any way possible! I have boycotted Sony products including blu-ray for years, and this just makes me glad that I have!!

  8. Music by darkain · · Score: 1

    Maybe they were just playing old music CDs on some of their computers? Ya'know, the old Sony CDs that contained them rootkits...

    1. Re:Music by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think Sony is doing anything intentional here. I just think that the Indians who coded their site did a shitty job and they need to hire better Indians.

      Please, Americans can't do the work - no American has the skills. The bigshits in Silicon Valley say so.

  9. White Fri was the star of Futuramer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Black Fri was the star of Futurama

  10. Luckily by The-Ixian · · Score: 1

    There is a whole Internet that Sony does not have control over.... and it is even indexed by several companies also not controlled by Sony! Win!

    --
    My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
  11. Store should be re-titled by bad_fx · · Score: 2

    It should read: "Sony learns about Streisand effect the hard way" ;-)

  12. All HDR TVs have horrible input lag by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Even the fastest HDR tvs have latency around the 30ms zone (so your screen is 2 frames behind the action going on in a game), and that's only in 'game mode' that sometimes even deactivates hdr functionality.

    1. Re:All HDR TVs have horrible input lag by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 1

      I've seen experiments that show the brain is remarkably foolable when it comes to synchronising actions and vision.

      If you set up a light to flash every time the volunteer pushes a button, but then slowly increase the delay, their brain will compensate and they'll still think it's instant (up to a point, of course).

      But then if you remove the delay, the next time they press the button they will perceive the light as coming on before they pushed the button.

      So while it will always seem much less laggy if you go from an HDTV to a dumb TV (CRT or an LCD computer monitor for example), that doesn't necessarily mean you were having such a bad experience with the TV before you switched. Your brain may have been filtering out some of the delay between your actions and the on-screen consequences.

      There's probably some kind of opposite analogy with how Obama will be viewed in four years time...

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  13. Crap by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Any Sony product is crap. Bluray player refuses to play some DVDs, takes forever to startup or eject, Has a USB port that is proprietary device. Fuck Sony.

  14. They Hate You by Kozar_The_Malignant · · Score: 1

    Sony's business model appears to be built on a foundation of a deep and and abiding hatred of their customers. In my personal opinion, any Sony product connected to the internet is a security risk, especially if it phones home.

    --
    Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
  15. Update by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    There is a firmware update ( Link ) to fix the input lag.

    Unfortunately Sony did not make it available to all TVs using the same chip for marketing reasons (only higher end TVs get lower input lag). I am sad as I have one of those (X8005C). Shame on Sony.

    Hopefully now all TV manufacturers will pay more attention to input lag in general.

  16. Well, duh. by karlandtanya · · Score: 1

    their house their rules.
    If you want good feedback, look at the reviews on several different websites. Amazon, Newegg, whatever. community sites? Maybe some of the folks at videohelp can point you in the right direction--it's not about TVs, but I'm thinking some of them might know what a TV is.

    Too much trouble?
    Seriously--how long did it take you to earn the cost of that toy? Maybe spend 1% as much time researching how you're going to blow your money?

    Still no guarantee but what do you expect when you go to the mfr's site?

    --
    "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
  17. Of course by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ... Censoring Negative Feedback ...

    If you think a manufacturer or vendor isn't doing this, you're not very smart. A good test of a manufacturer/vendor is to check the their comments section for negative feedback: There's always some idiot who won't read the manual but will tell everyone it's a shitty product. It doesn't help that there are a lot of shitty products available but a half-intelligent review will describe the source of shittiness.

  18. Re:My Sony Bravia TV had an interesting story, whe by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    try a joke thats actually funny - dickhole

    Good of you to sign your post, AC.