Slashdot Mirror
Sony Appears To Be Blocking Kodi On Its Recent Android TVs (androidpolice.com)
Several reports indict that at least some of Sony's recent Android TVs are actively blocking Kodi, the open-source, cross-platform streaming and media player that allows you to access and play local, network, and remote content. Android Police reports: The official Kodi project Twitter account pointed out Sony's deficiency a couple of days ago, but reports on the Kodi forums of issues installing and running the app from the Play Store go even further back to last year. A handful of affected enthusiasts believe they have discovered the cause of the problem: Sony seems to be blocking the package ID for the app from being installed/run. Supporting this theory is the fact that recompiling the app from scratch with a different ID allows it to work.
Sony executives should have all been taken to the parking lot and shot after they started spreading malware.
Fortunately, this only affects those stupid morons who continue to do business with Sony.
it is Sony tv not your tv
Aside from PlayStation?
I stopped supporting Sony a long time ago.
For the illusion of protecting their revenue from their content division? This is my shocked face.
Sony hardware used to be great. Used to be. Now it's overpriced compared to a dozen competitors. No reason to buy it.
Fuck those fucking fuckers.
Samsung has Ads you can't turn off unless you disconnect it from the internet... probably the best remote
Sony is rudely blocking kodi, remove sucks with the netflix and google play buttons
LG - insane burnin issues, remove is designed for seniors.
remember when beating the DRM nazis was as easy as photocopying the manual to answer page/line prompts?
- In Soviet Korea, only old people loose all their bases to Natalie Portman's petrified hot grits overlords.
Return the defective product.
If proven consumer affairs need a big yellow warning label on their product reporting said limitations and or telemertry - which is probably also baked in.
Then a class action to compensate for the time in returning and setting up a different brand.
The only reason I bought Fire Sticks was to run Kodi. I'd be royally pissed if Amazon pulled the same crap as Sony.
---
DRM is like antifreeze, to the MPAA/RIAA it's sweet, to the consumers it's poison.
especially smart ones. I guess it's a Ford/Chevy kind of loyalty.
When SONY made 200lb 30+inch CRTs they were pretty good.
Nowadays, SONY is overpriced and under performs compared to most other vendors/.
And don't get me started on "smart" televisions.
I'd much rather toss a $100 media box when it becomes useless than have to bypass all the smart features by blocking a tv on WIFI after updates are discontinued (and still have to buy a media box).
Over time tvs also stop being powerful enough to run updated software that works on media boxes, tablets or smart phones.
If a tv doesn't have at least 2GB of memory, don't call it "smart".
Oh and please don't even bother with other integration like alexa/siri/google... voice spying "services" or usage/metric reporting back to the mothership. /RANT off
Yet another reason I wouldn't use the "TV" as the streaming box
I stopped using any of the smart TV features on my TV over the summer. I got a refurb small form factor PC and plugged in the HDMI to my TV. Windows is a little clunky, but it runs way better than whatever was on my TV. Runs Netflix, Plex, tons of web browser based TV channels, and anything else you would ever want on your TV. Easily connects to a VPN and can even run a bunch of games. I tried a couple Android boxes, but they were terrible and there was a bunch of apps that just didn't run. I don't think there's a smart TV or other TV box that beats having an actual PC hooked up to your TV.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
It's not like it's difficult to get an Android TV box. Amazon is overrun with a bunch of Chinese-made Android TV clones, with all of them happily running Kodi. After I cut my cord last year I bought three of them. Three different ones. I wanted to compare and see which one was better (in case anyone wonders, I liked the GooBang Doo one the best -- yes, that's a real name).
So, all that Sony has accomplished here is that millions of people are going to be making a mental note to skip Sony, and go with somebody else. If the Sony ones are carried on Amazon, I expect to see a bunch of one-star reviews popping up, complaining about Sony blacklisting Kodi. Should be interesting to see if Amazon decides to censor the reviews, and with what excuse -- after all, the reviews will be factually correct.
Great job, Sony. You haven't learned a thing from your Betamax days. Like with Betamax, Sony is ignoring what their customers want, because they think they know better. Their customers wanted to record football games and movies that run for 2-3 hours. So, Sony was convinced that Betamax recorders, with one hour tapes, will be good enough.
Similarly, Sony is now convinced that their customer do not, I repeat, do not want to run Kodi on their Android TV boxes, and that they, Sony, should helpfully make sure of that. Good luck with that.
Sony TV's always sucked - even in the trinatron days.
The stupid wires make the video shimmer when there's base playing nearby.
They blue phosphor they used was the wrong color and made flesh tones look purple, even after adjusting the white balance correctly.
They were poorly engineered crap from the very beginning.
The problem is many still remember the days of the trinitron where they were actually a premium brand but you got one of the best quality TV's for the money. They don't realise Sony is no longer the leader in Quality or performance but they look at the prices and think they must still be the best as they are extremely expensive. They just don't know that Sony now trades on their name from quality of yester years.
another reason to never give Sony your money. There's Plenty of other open non-asshole systems to use that do the trick.
Too bad there's no way to install Kodi onto an independent device which plugs into the HDMI port of your Sony TV.
Crappy move by Sony, but ultimately futile.
Just bought a Samsung 4K TV. Samsung, of course, does data gathering. It's in the EULA and you can't say no to it. However, I don't watch cable. I watch everything through my Vero 4K+ and my Plex library, which Samsung can't track. Screw you Samsung.
I also recently got AT&T's fiber Internet, replacing the loathsome Comcast I'd put up with for two years because they were the only high-speed option. AT&T, of course, wants to track my Internet usage. So I use a VPN for everything. Screw you AT&T.
Now Sony wants to limit what apps you can put on their TV's? Screw you Sony. Not only will I not buy your products, but if I am ever in the position of being forced to use one, I'll find a way to deny you whatever you think you'll get out of me.
These heavy-handed actions by companies will only engender more of us to find ways to throw monkey wrenches into their plans. Bring it on. There's nothing I love more than screwing over companies who thinks their customers are suckers.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
This is actually should cause for them to fail the android certification.
like come on fuckers. You can't just block stuff like this for funzies. If you don't like it, lobby for it to be removed from the play store or something. Like the fuck, you're going to just ban all apps that you don't like? food delivery network didn't make a deal with you so you're going to ban their app from your phones too?
furthermore. you think people will buy the tv and your pushed streaming services more for doing this? fat fucking chance.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
I'd much rather toss a $100 media box
Media box? Is this the making of some old school joke? Next you'll be telling me you connect it to the TV with cables like something from the movies.
If a tv doesn't have at least 2GB of memory, don't call it "smart".
And now that I'm done picking on your for your view of the past, I'm going to pick on you for your view of the present. WTF do you need 2GB of memory for in an appliance!
This really just serves as reminder still not to buy Sony.
I guess one way to narrow it down is try some other free streaming / playback apps and see what happens to those.
Smart thing to do is use a box or stick. Then, when the the newer updated version comes out you don't have to buy a new TV.
I'm sure if just one company put the ability to turn off the "smart" tv functions and present a TV which only accepted a basic input list, even making the tuner non functional, there would be droves of people wanting to buy it and turn off that smart function.
Problem is that it's infested the TV and cannot be seperated from it.
Dumb display montiors with the same panels cost more. Sometimes double.
WTF.
> And now that I'm done picking on your for your view of the past, I'm going to pick on you for your view of the present. WTF do you need 2GB of memory for in an appliance!
Becuase it runs android would be a good start. In fact I would say 4GB minimum for sane android use these days.
+----------------- | What is the question!
In fact I would say 4GB minimum for sane android use these days.
Based on what? Experience with a shitty phone? Android's RAM requirements are dependent on the rendering resolution which for TV interfaces is not very high. For a TV interface which renders at 1080p 512MB of RAM is fine for Android. "Oh but look at the RAM usage idle on my phone!" Well Android actually takes that into account just fine and on devices with less than 1GB of RAM you have to set ActivityManager.isLowRamDevice() = True which causes the system not to cache every bloody app.
The real problem is garbage coders, but more than that it's a TV. Just because it runs Android doesn't make it your multi purpose general pocket computer that people expect to use for multi-tasking. Really there's no reason why 4GB of RAM is required on a TV, definitely not because it uses Android. Hell 4GB is more than enough to get a full blown Windows 10 machine running butter smooth 4K to a display. And that bloated piece of shit (windows) should not be a benchmark.
It's called a computer. Connect the "Smart" TV to it via a cable of some sort. Run Kodi/MythTV/whatever on computer, output to TV. Done.
Woooooooow, so hard to exploit, Sony, you made me have to think for like two seconds after waking and baking.
This just shows you how long it takes for a large company to respond to any shift in the market. Kodi used to be a haven for piracy, and now its often overlooked for standalone apk's like tvzion and morphtv et al that are more effective than kodi at piracy. If anything Kodi is used more often for legitimate purposes than piracy now, since most of the show and movie scraper apps have moved to standalone apks. Don't worry though Sony will block those as soon as people aren't using them any more... Also this comes on the heels of CES where there competitors are showcasing better and cheaper panels than Sony. Talk about getting completely dominated. The PlayStation product line shouldn't be your only profitable business sector, get it together.
Ah, evil company.
Used Kodi in the past years, but here lately has gone to crap even with latest updates.
I bought a Sony television this past xmas for two reasons:
1. It did not have built-in ads, whereas LG and Samsung (while they had nicer TVs), have ads that you cannot disable. I will not support LG/Samsung TVs for this reason, even if they are technologically superior TVs. Frankly, I was amazed that SONY (of all companies) didn't have forced ads in their TVs.
2. Considering point #1: It also has the best quality for the price. Sure, I can get much cheaper TVs, but they don't also have Dolby Vision, and the various visual qualities that my model has
3. It was far less expensive than people here let on, and decently discounted because of Black Friday
The only downside so far is that the Android TV OS is god awfully slow... but it works well, and is not intrusive.
Kodi is still great for playing local files. You know, off a file share.
I wonder if blocking the install of a particular app from the play store, violates the TOS of the play store / Android license?
Where do you get your information from?
I researched my TV purchase pretty heavily (rtings is a great place for information), and a few years ago when I bought my TV, a $500 Sony was pretty much the best value for movie watching. (Not the best TV mind you, but their upper tier models were still great, I just didn't' want to spend that kind of money)
You do lose viewing angle on most of their models, but you get excellent screen uniformity, a great black level and excellent color reproduction.
I boycotted Sony for close to a decade after the whole "rootkit" debacle, but by 2016 they honestly had the best hardware for the buck.
With all due respect, if you think Sony underperforms compared to most other vendors, I'd really like to see what you are buying so I can get their name.
Otherwise, I have the feeling we have different needs from our TV. If you are happy with a TCL or a Visio, that's great, but some people really care about picture quality and color accuracy, which tends to leave us looking at Samsung, Sony, and LG. And the price points on the models tends to be the same across the board at that level.
What you get is differences in focus. LG's tend to have better viewing angles if I recall. Sony (at least when I bought mine) was I think the only company whose low end panels would show 24 fps content natively and not perform a pull down and introduce screen judder. (which was a deal breaker for me on other low end models). Samsung probably had the best picture, but they were always a bit pricier.
Things are always changing as well, so who knows if that's true now. I'd probably be looking at OLED TV's if I wanted a good picture now since they will have a great black levels and great HDR / color accuracy.
Oh, and I agree with you on the smart TV part. I have a PC and a Roku hooked up to my TV. Way better features at a fraction of the cost on the roku. The PC is probably a bit expensive for most people but it was a spare.
What you bought was a Sharp TV, with the Sony logo slapped on and their styling. The technology Sony applied was that piece of shit Android TV OS and chips.
You sir have no fucking idea about what you are babbling about.
Nowadays software, and especially Android software, is so shitty that 512mb of RAM would allow you to see the launcher icons but couldn't run anything from it. Expect needing 6 and 8GB in 2020 for basic web browsing and media playing.
You're one of those guys that bought a TV/VCR combo thing, right? To avoid all the wires, and then have to toss the whole thing when they break in a way that makes the other half fail, too? :P