@dutchice, Sony may have been aware of the issue "from the very start", but that just confirms that Sony's support people were either not informed of this fact, or were actively told to lie to customers.
As many people have reported, the standard line on the phone was that support understood what was being raised with them, but this was not a problem with the set but rather a standard feature, and that the A1 was operating within specifications with this problem. In many cases, including Jim (OP of this thread) and me it was only when legal action of some sort was threatened that Sony support moved from "it's within spec" to vague statements like "our engineers in Japan are looking at it". And even today there is no public statement by Sony, on a Sony website, acknowledging the issue or explaining the process.
For example, here's what Sony said to me:
It is possible that the latest firmware update did increase the amount of dimming to prevent the image retention for OLED models. This condition is normal and not a malfunction on the TV.
And:
I understand your sentiment regarding this feature and how it drastically dims the the screen. However this was done to reduce the stress being received by the OLED screen to reduce screen burn.
So please tell me how Sony was making these very specific statements to me about this problem if they actually knew it was a stuff up with the firmware and were actively working on a fix? It's hard to see how the above statements could be made without Sony support staff being expressly instructed to mislead customers.
If Sony had just said from day one "we are aware of this problem and we definitely will fix it, just give us some time" then I think there would be a lot less ill will and most of us would feel like we are not being treated like morons.
In my view Sony is a company with immense cultural problems, more interested in spinning away problems than customer service. A tiny amount of honesty and courtesy from the company would have gone a long way.
