YOUVIEW DE-CRIPPLER. A FIX YAY!!

[Publiclyavailable]

I spoke with Sony Support today. Two items of Good News.

1.  A fix for the disasterous Youview set crippler

2. A help guide for your TV so you can see how to use it (ie, not just the silly set up pamphlet).

OK here goes - as advised straight from the SONY horse's mouth - it worked for me!

1.  To regain my satelite and terrestrial channels without Youview and with the EPGs for both intact, I was told to reset the factory setting via Home/Settings / "Storage and Reset".  I just reset the whole box. It went through a switch off and restart/reboot sequence then I was able to re-setup the digital terrestrial and satellite channels as originally provided.

WARNING.  Later in the process the deadly YouView appears and asks if you want to select it.  There is no option but to click NEXT (clicking BACK just keeps you in the setup loop). After clicking next just keep selecting the options that say no no no.  It is quite persistent in its belief that you probably want it but just keep telling it to go away and it will eventualy stop asking.  Result!!

The only minor issue is that Youview remains as an icon, in the home area, ready to taunt you into installing it again sometime.  KEEP WELL CLEAR!  🙂

2.  The Help Manual

This is unhelpfully called a help manual when what it really is is a guide to what the set does and how to use it.  Just go here and insert you set's model number then select the HTML Help Guide for your set. It tells you how to use the darn thing!  The "User Guide" in pdf format is just the stupind start up pamphlet. Result again!!

http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en/hub/prd-tvhc-tv

Happy viewing everyone

PA

[longjohn8]

Yes! the USB recording facility most certainly did work prior to enabling YouView. YouView not only disables furture recording but also disable access to previous recordings made via USB. This is ridiculous.

[royabrown]

---

@longjohn8 wrote:

This is not a fix to the YouView crippling - its just a YouView uninstall/disable.

What we really want is to be able to use YouView and its full catchup facilities to gether with the inbuilt USB recording and Satellite tuner!

---

The difference escapes me - disable YouView and it is gone, apart from an icon should you want it back.

Understandably, you would like YouView to be able to record - I don't think you will ever get the Freeview EPG, which can record, working alongside the YouView one which still can't, even after all this time,

That YouView will not coexist with satellite is an ongoing blot on both YouView and Sony. Personally, though, I think that the satellite not being Freesat is a blot on Sony also.

My unvarying advice about the catch-up apps outside of YouView is to get a £15 NowTV box - you don't have to subscribe - and use that, plugged into the TV, for the missing 2, or for all 4. No biggie....

[longjohn8]

Agree entirely about the blot on Sony & YouView & no Freesat. It does seems stupid to have to add another box to get full catchup - where are the Android apps for ITV Player and 4 catchups? While it's nice to have the catchups within the guide, utilising separate apps is no big deal. But a separate box?? Makes a nonsense for a so called 'smart' or in this case stupid TV.

There is nothing else that these Sony Android TVs do better than the equvalent smart Panys, Samsungs etc - Indeed all seem to be more stable than Sony Android.

Sony has played its last card with me! So my unvarying advice is to avoid Sony in future.

[bovaboy]

Hi,

I had a similar problem but fixed it with a different approach. I like the Youview catchup service etc and thinks it works well. I would say the android OS is a little sketchy compared to some of the other providers but it can also do a lot more than the other manufacturers operating systems.

This solution only works if you have a server at home which you use for other things (or a computer you're happy to leave on). I used to use Mediaportal for all of my home recording so had a server with this already installed, I simply switched this back on and instaled a sattelite card (which I already had) and a HDhomerun tuner I used to use. I had to install the Kodi TV service package on the server also.

Installed Kodi on the Android TV with the Mediaportal add-on enabled, a little bit of fiddling with the settings to make it stable and now I have access to sattelite and PVR all on the Sony TV. As an added advantage Kodi also picked up all of my old movies, pictures and music on the server if I ever want to watch them too.

I know this won't help everyone but it has worked out as a solution for me.

[bovaboy]

I'd just like to point out that this is using KODI for its original purpose and NOT for streaming pirated content.

[Anonymous]

Hi @bovaboy

Thanks for posting this.  It might give some people another idea or so.

Cheers

[royabrown]

Hi bovaboy

So you keep the TV in YouView mode, and use the server via Kodi to provide the two 'missing' YouView functions, the ability to record, and the ability to coexist with satellite?

Cunning.

Anither method some people employ is to keep the TV in Freeview/Recording/Satellite mode, and use a YouView box for the YouView features, which are richer in most ways, albeit the same or poorer in some ways, than those on YouView TV.

[bovaboy]

Hi,

Yes, thats the general idea and yes using a seperate youview box is another way around the problem. The use of a Mediaportal server has extra benefits such as being able to watch the recorded channels etc. in more than one room, the storage for recordings is as big as you want it to be (I have 3TB for recordings) selecting recordings and downloading them when out of the house (I can access my recorded TV when in hotels for example) among other things.

This solution does require some extra hardware costs and some technical know how to get it to work and I would warn that while mediaportal is good it does chew up quite a lot of time to get it to work the way you want (though just to get it to record and connect to the TV isn't too bad). Also watching live TV through this system is slow when changing channels (Stream has to start from card to hard disk, then streamed from hard disk to TV over ethernet, this will be worse over wireless).

Also having a server running 24/7 does of course use electricity,

My wife has never got on with Mediaportal, it always seems to break when she tries to use it.

[royabrown]

---

@bovaboy wrote:

Hi,

<snip good stuff>

My wife has never got on with Mediaportal, it always seems to break when she tries to use it.

---

Our Sony Android YouView TV got downgraded to another room and urgently and expensively replaced by a Samsung in the lounge three days before Xmas 2015, when I returned from a shopping trip to find everyone crowded round a 32in set in another room, as no-one but me could make the Sony behave 😞

I have always thought the spouse test important: can i safely leave this device with someone who just wants to watch it, and takes no pleasure in convoluted setup regimes and debugging the damn thing?

Nonetheless, she is a better beta tester than me, as i have found several times; i learn to tiptoe round the shortcomings, which is not what you want in beta testing, while she confronts them head on, and all I have to do is to watch and take notes 🙂

Come 2017, the Sony TV is better than it was back then - but not as good as it ought to have been by now.

[Hermanthemighty]

I tried to disable Youview in the settings menu repeatedly but it had no effect whatsoever. Still no satellite tuner access.

I will try a soft rest, evenb though it means a lot of hassle.

It seems to me an absurdity that a full blown technical part of the TV, the satellite tunre, is rendered pointless by Youview on this TV.