What is the actual problem that stops us watching Apple TV on a Sony set?

[Kevin_W]

I have a Sony Bravia KD32W800 (2021) tv.

2 years on since buying it as what the salesman described then as Sony's latest state of the art set, and that the set was so new that there wasn't an Apple TV app for it yet but "it would be made available shortly" - but there is still no app to enable us to watch Apple TV programmes.  Who might know whether it is ever going to happen?  Clearly no point in asking Sony salesmen...

[Kevin_W]

Google Assist button?  If you mean the microphone button then yes, it can search the Google App Store but when asking for Apple TV it says nothing found.  I know there is an Apple TV app on other smart TVs, but I think the issue is whether Apple have specifically made an app that works with Android TVs...

[daveyh64]

Most  Smart tvs run the android system or as it is now known as google tv, they devised the android os.

My Sony tv is on google tv which if you interrogated further in settings is Android OS 10 and it has Apple TV

available through the google assist button.

[Kevin_W]

Thanks. That is interesting!  I think I will persist in trying to get an answer from Sony...  It doesn't make sense!

[royabrown2]

@Kevin_W 

Here is a list of TVs on which Apple TV is supported:-

https://www.apple.com/eg/apple-tv-app/devices/

There are 18 series of Sony Android TVs supported. Yours is not included there.

It was always an odd TV, by any standards. Android but with Freeview Play, HD Ready when the price you paid should have got you full HD, underspecified in very many respects, this was Sony getting the 32” set market horrendously wrong, and they haven’t got it right yet,

They should either abandon it altogether (which maybe they have) or work a lot harder on a competitive offering for it.

[Kevin_W · Accepted solution]

That's probably why the price has dropped from £449 to £299....   Thanks for all the input. 

[Fab3rge]

Hi

I can’t even watch Apple TV through my Sony KD-49XE9005 

it just crashes as soon as I press play and goes into a reboot loop (until I pull out the HDMI). 

Like you said, I was also promised a future-proof TV but it did not even last 3 years without glitches. 

I’ve seen plenty of evidence that software is making TVs completely obsolete within a matter of a few short years now (whereas they used to last 10-20 years - nothing a smack on the top of the box wouldn’t fix!) 

The amount of e-waste in landfill must be staggering but consumers gotta keep Sony and Co afloat somehow, right? 

[Kevin_W]

The set cost £449.
I don’t have a separate Apple TV device.
The Google store does not show the Apple TV app as available.

Sent from my iPhone

[royabrown2]

@Fab3rge 

By and large, modern TVs do not respond well to percussive maintenance 😢

But, trying to keep a smart 2012 3D TV set alive after the apps on it started dying, I simply added an Amazon Firestick, and made it smarter than it ever had been.

And I’ve been doing it ever since, though I find Roku devices both less expensive and less in-your-face than Firesticks. Now all I have to worry about is if the screens last, which they do better than a lovely old Trinitron we had, which slowly went green over time.

It doesn’t matter how much your TV cost; for less than £50, sometimes a lot less, obsolescence becomes a thing of the past.

And not always obsolescence; the 2020 LGs, even the flagship GX we bought, came without the itv and Channel 4 players, which we were promised were coming later. No problem; a Roku Express 4K, heavily subsidised by Curry’s to £10, provided them from day 1 as a workaround.

Good thing too, as while itv eventually arrived, Channel 4 never did, and we watch it on the Roku to this day. And it’s still less clicks to get to it than to the embedded Channel 4 player on our dining room Samsung 😛

[Kevin_W]

Thank you. That’s really helpful! Still peeved about the John Lewis salesman saying the Apple TV app would be released “within a couple of weeks” of the new Sony set…
K

Sent from my iPhone