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

[jan.hansen957]

I'm not sure what the technical issue is, but I guess it would be easier to solve if Sony actually equipped their TV's with faster CPU/SOCs. A Mi Box which runs Android TV is 3x faster. That is sad.

[speedyrite]

Presumably whatever Sony might be able to do to rectify things so that the XE90s could "do" BBC iPlayer in 4K/UHD/HDR(HLG) is now too late anyway, because time is running out fast for the BBC who probably wouldn't be able to test and whitelist in time? I mean, they haven't managed to sort this over the past few weeks or months, so I have no confidence that they (Sony and/or BBC) can now pull the rabbit out of the hat in record quick time! For me, the XE90 is now a busted flush (or whatever the saying is) as far as supporting the trial with its internals is concerned. In fact, I've gone down the external device route to provide 4K/UHD/HDR sources now so that's it for me.

[BigUglyGac]

well another responce from jasmine and this time its the new excuse about it being new technology 

Thank you for your recent email.

Responding to your email, regarding your Sony KD-65XD9305.

We understand your frustration that your product is not listed as one of the compatible devices for BBC’s Live streaming of the world cup in 4K UHD and HDR. 

We would like to apologise for this inconvenience, however; this is a 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.

Please accept our apologies for any unintended inconvenience, as per your request the case has been passed to one of our Supervisors who should be in contact with yourself within 24 business hours. 

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

Thank you for your enquiry.

Yours sincerely,

Jasmine

nice to see its been passed up to a supervisor lets hope they know what they are doing rather than just posting whatever they are told to like the above. 

the reply this is to contained this threads url and the explanation we figured out that the sets just arnt powerful enough to show 4k hdr 60fps streams so it is disapointing yet again they trot out the netflix and amazon line, yeah neither of these show show anything in 60fps that im aware of so dodging the fact the sets not powerful enough. but at least they are no longer blaming bbciplayer for our sets not being supported. 

as for the new technology line after a qucik google. like a minute iv found a bbc r and d blog post from june 2014 when they where testing hdr at the world cup!!! so people knew hdr was coming then and sony should have known 60fps would follow soon after so that line is again either sony being inept and short sighted and a outright lie where they have intentionally built the sets to a lowr spec to maximise profits, which is crap for a lot of us who paid a hell of a lot for our supposed top of the line sets.

[rgledhill]

As someone went to great lengths to explain earlier, the technology now being trialled for delivering HDR is new, not from 2014.  The original testing they did was to develop HLG; now it's the compression system used to get the data over which is new and wasn't out when Sony released, never mind developed, the hardware for the TV.

[BigUglyGac]

now im no expert on this stuff just going off what i can find online but hlg has been in testing with the bbc and nhk since 2015 according to the wiki page so would have been known about, also according to the page HVAC is supposed to support it. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_Log-Gamma

so the argument of it being new technology is a bit iffy when the standard is supposed to be support by HVAC which our sets support. the issue is that the cant handle streaming 4k content in hdr at 60 fps no matter what standard is being used as for whatever reason sony didnt expect people to do that. which is very short sighted of them. 

[stormyuk]

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@rgledhill wrote:

As someone went to great lengths to explain earlier, the technology now being trialled for delivering HDR is new, not from 2014.  The original testing they did was to develop HLG; now it's the compression system used to get the data over which is new and wasn't out when Sony released, never mind developed, the hardware for the TV.

---

To play devils advocate you are being a bit broad brush there, the XE7000s from 2017 which are non-android, and a cheaper range of Sony TVs do support it. Yeh, that could point to Mediatek/SoC but, the XF's from 2018 do support it and as far as I am aware, they use the same Mediatek garbage as we have on our 2017 models. Still we just don't have enough information I guess, and we probably won't ever get it unless we can get a hardware site to strip down an XF8 and XF9 to see whats on the mainboards and compare that to the XE8 and XE9. I keep flip flopping between is the TV powerful enough or not, the XF9 has X1X processor from a picture processing point of view but the XF8 doesn't.

So maybe the XF models do have a newer Mediatek/SoC which isn't quite as garbage as the 2017 and 2016 ones?

[newbix]

Does anyone elses Iplayer picture looks like 720p no matter what setting you chose?

[bkmc47]

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@stormyuk wrote:

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@rgledhill wrote:

As someone went to great lengths to explain earlier, the technology now being trialled for delivering HDR is new, not from 2014.  The original testing they did was to develop HLG; now it's the compression system used to get the data over which is new and wasn't out when Sony released, never mind developed, the hardware for the TV.

---

To play devils advocate you are being a bit broad brush there, the XE7000s from 2017 which are non-android, and a cheaper range of Sony TVs do support it. Yeh, that could point to Mediatek/SoC but, the XF's from 2018 do support it and as far as I am aware, they use the same Mediatek garbage as we have on our 2017 models. Still we just don't have enough information I guess, and we probably won't ever get it unless we can get a hardware site to strip down an XF8 and XF9 to see whats on the mainboards and compare that to the XE8 and XE9. I keep flip flopping between is the TV powerful enough or not, the XF9 has X1X processor from a picture processing point of view but the XF8 doesn't.

So maybe the XF models do have a newer Mediatek/SoC which isn't quite as garbage as the 2017 and 2016 ones?

---

My understanding is that XF models use EXACTLY the same Mediatek/Soc

Of course the BBC's requirements (both in Bandwidth and TV processing power) may well come down - they are, currently, far higher than needed for Netflix/Amazon/YouTube!

[be11aml]

This is all very frustrating and disappointing. Sony are really not providing any reasons to believe that an investment in their technology is worthwhile.

I now have a 4k TV, with a potentially great operating system, that have been limited by the choice of poor components. The recent update to the BBC iPlayer app is limiting resolution to 1280 by 720,. that is pathetic.

I also have a PS4 Pro, which is the only reason I have a 4K TV and the iPlayer output is at least 1920 by 1080. Perhaps they could have made this mess a little easier if they had done something with PS4/PS4 Pro and making the iPlayer HDR work.

No more Sony TV's for me, there are many more suppliers that seem to care about customers for longer. If you remove the 2018 TV's from the Sony support list, they are behind Samsung, LG, Philips, Hisense, Hitachi and Toshiba for support of 2017 models. Clearly, Sony are now a tier 2 manufacturer of TVs!

End rant 

Thanks for Nothing Sony

[rod_hull]

iPlayer's max. resolution on any device has always been 720p I believe (apart from the previous 4K trials)...