BBC iPlayer 4k support in time for the World cup?

[ajwool]

So, will we finally get Bbc iPlayer support in time for the World Cup? Announcement coming imminently:

https://www.whathifi.com/news/bbc-4k-hdr-world-cup-confirmation-week-away

[samcdonnell]

I agree that threatening to sue sony is going a bit far. But maybe if the Roku works they should be covering the cost of one for all of us.

[rgledhill]

Hi Sam,

At the time (when you bought the A1), it did support the trials of HDR that the BBC were running; my 49XE9005 did too.  However since then they have moved to 4k (instead of Full HD) trials, and it's the 4k aspect that isn't supported by our TVs at the moment.  HDR/HLG is a red herring in this conversation.

Frustrating as it is, Sony couldn't have predicted that the BBC would move to mega-high bandwith, 50fps and a new encoding for iPlayer when they moved to 4k, so they quite legitamately put down that it supported iPlayer HDR as of that time.

If the Beeb put out Full HD HDR at 25fps on iPlayer, our sets would support it fine, as shown by the early trials.

Cheers

Richard

[jan.hansen957]

If you got a 49 inch you're really lucky since it is impossible to benefit from 4k versus 1080 unless you're sitting 2 feet away from you're TV. If you go from 720p to 2160p there's a difference. Wouldn't matter much if 49 inch TVs came with 4k or 1080p support as long as the TV supported HDR.

[rgledhill]

To be honest that's very subjective.  I'm about 6 feet away from the TV and I can definitely tell the difference between 1080p and 2160p footage; it's not just the level of detail, it's also the smaller block size for the MPEG compression used and the improvement in gradations in shading.  I keep seeing this "certain knowledge" that you need to be so-and-so far away but it just isn't true for all people, for all situations.  I can repeatably tell the difference between Full HD and 4k streams of otherwise identical material.

Even on the graph you've posted it shows it's "worth it" for 3 feet to 7 feet away for a 49" TV...

[stormyuk]

2 feet away? Cobblers :). I don't even have 20:20 vision and to me a 2160p image vs 1080p image is night and day. HDR is the extra gravy.

[BigUglyGac]

well a had a email out of the blue from sony support this will be the third person who's chimed in 

. 

in short the normal twoddle about the engineers are looking in to it and yet again ignoring the fact no amount of engineer wuizardy short of replacing the internals or giving people rokus will sort this it seems.

they did have a line or two to say about this forum which is nice of them although rather disapointing. 

With reference to the discussion on the community forum, we are afraid that we will not be able to answer the questions raised there, and we can only accredit our sources of information and announcements regarding our products.

We will not be able to check or confirm 3rd party suggested solutions, statements, or observations made on our products.

nice to see they are open minded about this place and the information we have all posted. iv fired one back but i feel im banging my head against a very large wall now as it seems "engineer fix!" is the magic words they will keep spoutinng as a way to fob us all off. 

[rgledhill]

At least they have acknowledged the problem, and let's remember that we are all making assumptions and deductions but without any hard facts to back it up.  Unfortunately they can't fix things on our hunches!  Their engineers are the only ones who can diagnose and hopefully fix this.  It's churlish to think that we know the internal workings of the TV better than their own development engineers.

To be honest, I'm not quite sure what more anyone's expecting in communications with them?  Customer support have given the only answer they can give, which is that the engineers are investigating it and want to work on a fix.

[stormyuk]

This is probably so the don't get sued or have to recall models, the "frame stutter/repeat" issue is a classic example of this, there are numerous videos, discriptions and forum posts all about it from many users, its not an isolated issue. Every XE90 I have ever seen has the "bug".

Yet officially "There are no known issues". Technical support answer every query about it, as if its a new thing they have never heard of. If they acknoledged that it was known, then legal action might actually be a goer in that instance, as it would be admitting a material defect of a product, where as now, customer relations have been known to swap TVs as a "gesture of good will". (no admission of liability is ever made as far as I know).

[BigUglyGac]

for me it doesnt help the way they have handled this, remember we went through this dance with blue planet hdr test and got the "engineer" line then. and this time around they even blamed the bbc directly for it saying its down to the bbc to ok which sets work with it?! so yeah maybe we are expecting too much from them but a coherent responce would be nice. 

and true cust service reps can only respound with whats on their scripts, but maybe just maybe someone at the service centre should be shouting at the engineering side asking whats going on with so many different sets not working. but seems thats a no no and as stormyuk suggests if they ignore the problems and theres no known issues no one can take them to court or get their set swapped or something else. 

like iv said before it would be nice when they launch them to list actually what the sets can do rather than just saying yeah it does 4k and hdr but never what fps or anything else people may want to know. 

[Jimmybrick]

got this email today.

Dear Mr 

Thank you for your recent email.

In regards to your enquiry regarding your Sony KD-49XE9005, we would like to apologise for this inconvenience, however this is new technology that was not announced during the time that your TV was manufactured and sold. Your TV is 4K UHD and HDR ready and you can experience this via numerous applications such as Netflix or Amazon 4k Streaming, as well as through a 4K Blu-ray player.

Should you have any further questions, please feel free to reply to this email.

Thank you for your enquiry.

Yours sincerely,

Nadine

SONY SUPPORT TEAM
http://www.sony.co.uk/support/en.

So like it or lump it basically