Sony Africa Shocking service

I bought a 65"Sony TV on the 2 April 2022 from Incredible Connection.

Today 12 June 2022 I still don't have a refund or a TV.

In the first 3 days I tried to play a movie with a DTS sound track and had no sound, while movies with Dolby played fine.

It took over 3 weeks to contact any person from Sony in South Africa. I tried almost every day for over 2 weeks.

The number to phone for technical support is in Dubai and every time I phoned they where very disinterested to help, just trying to get me of the phone ASAP. They gave me numbers of companies in South Africa to phone and it was all companies that no longer services Sony TV's or no longer existed. I also tried the USA but they shut me down quick if they heard I am from South Africa.

I also phoned Incredible Connection, but they seem to have no technical staff. They just asked me: "What is DTS?"

They told me to phone the official Sony servicing center in Alberton called Community Electronics. You won't believe this:

They also asked me what is DTS. I said if you don't know you cannot help me, That is it.

After 3 weeks and a lot of fighting with Incredible Connection .....finally someone phoned me from Sony SA. Tony Cadilhe the National Service Manager SA. I thought now thing will get sorted, but you won't believe this. He insisted the TV should goes to Community Electronics and he also has never heard of DTS ......what a joke.

Now from the research I have done I deducted that the TV could play DTS on Android 9 but the newest firmware with Android 11 is not able to play back any DTS, neither from an app or media player or a Sony PS4. A simple fix and then send me the firmware, but no they had other plans They came to fetch the brand new TV to take to a service center for a simple software problem. They ended up swapping the main board of the TV in order to go back to Android 9. Now I had a couple of problems with that.

1. The new board is for a 43” TV and I have a 65” TV. This now changes the model number of the inner part to KD-43X7500H while on the back it’s a KD-65X7500H. This is very confusing when we install a driver for the control system. The drivers are according to the exact model number. Also, the TV does not have a serial number anymore.

2. I checked the TV before it went in and there was no backlight bleeding from the edges. Now it does have backlight bleeding. When I got to Community Electronics to test for DTS the TV was on the floor with no stands attached. This is a big NO for a heavy LCD TV and puts pressure on the bezel, that in turn puts pressure on the edge of the panel. The slightest shift can cause backlight edge bleeding. Just how do you lower down a TV to the floor without one corner hitting the floor first? Almost impossible. Just try it, you will see it’s hard to keep the underside of the TV parallel to the floor while lowering it down. The result is back light bleeding emanating from the lower right corner of the set that is consistent of a TV been handled incorrectly. I even used to show off the great black level of the this TV set to friends & family and now its terrible.

3. The TV has serious audio switching issues. When you play a video with say DTS and play another video with DTS it plays just fine but when you switch to another format like Dolby it either has no sound or it play in PCM stereo instead of say Dolby Digital 5.1 or DD+. This also happens when switching between apps like from example Netflix with DD+ to YouTube with stereo. The only way to fix it is to close all the apps and restart the Android OS. This is extremely cumbersome. I am restarting at least 5-10 times in one session

4. I now have a persistent pop up to update the firmware that cannot be switched off. This would have been a little bit less annoying but remember that I now must restart the TV often between videos and this make it a lot worse since after each restart I get a pop up. There is also a persistent notification to update.

5. I can no longer update any apps since this is somehow linked. To disable the automatic firmware update you must disable the app updates.

6. All security patches are also disabled, and I now have the latest security patch from as far back as July 2020. This makes the OS much less secure. Since Google has all my passwords this is not very assuring.

7. I still do not have any Control4 SDDP support. Sony said that all X series TV’s will have support for Control4 SDDP. Control4 advance support technician said they even have it for Sony TVs in India. I was under the impression that we get the same models as ASIA & Middle east.

So naturally I send the TV back and I am still waiting.

I am not happy with the way this was handled. I expected that you were going to test the DTS issue on one of your TV’s and then just send me a firmware update once its fixed. Or alternatively send me a new TV with Android 9 and send me the updated firmware once the DTS bug is fixed. The sad thing is I still want a Sony TV since I need Android OS. Why can Sony not just update the broken firmware to make it work again. And why am I still waiting for a TV?