@1Allingham
itvX is basically a whole new app, and itv have to decide what minimum base specification they are going to support. I expect there will be a bit of back-and-forth with the major manufacturers, who may well have to decide what models will get software tweaks and which won’t, but hardware comes into it too; if itvX requires certain features that older Sony sets just don’t have, then it’s never going to run on them.
I think the reasonable support life of a TV should be six years, so I would forgive itvX not programming for sets before 2017, and/or Sony declining to support new apps on sets older than that.
So I guess that like my 2015 Samsung that no longer supports Now, and doesn’t support UHD on the BBC iPlayer, your 2015 Sony is going to lose apps, or bits of apps, as time goes by.
But for 2018 and later sets, not to support things like itvX is reprehensible, though who the fault lies with, Sony or itv or a bit of both, I could not say.
As regards buying Sony TVs, I have to remind myself, every time I pass one in a showroom and see its gorgeous picture, that beauty is only skin deep. It used to be when you bought a Sony TV, you paid a premium, but you knew that premium had gone into the engineering, and nobody else could match a Trinitron, either for picture or for reliability.
I wish Sony would put someone with their camera ethos in charge of TVs, try and go back to the days when the engineering matched the PQ, charge a premium if needs be, and let the other manufacturers race to the bottom, and welcome to it.
My favourite bedtime reading is a Sony product manual…
