Sony’s one of the best in the business. I have an A9G, I watched the Martian in 4K the other night and it was stunning.
Yes, I have one too—which I chose over the LG C9 because of Sony’s explicit promise to provide a firmware upgrade that supports Airplay 2 and HomeKit “by Q4”. The C9 already had these features available, was $1200 cheaper, and had HDMI 2.1 futureproofing. But the charlatan at Magnolia assured me it was worth it to go with the Sony.
Sure, the Sony’s picture is great; I have an external sound bar and home theater setup, so the sound quality really wasn’t a big issue for me.
Sony finally got around to making the Apple upgrade available on December 3rd, and I quickly installed it—only to have Sony recall it due to serious performance issues. And those issues are staggeringly evident when comparing the picture quality and performance between using Airplay to cast video to my Apple TV vs the TV’s integrated Airplay receiver. And downgrading back to the stable firmware is near impossible.
So Sony still hasn’t fulfilled their promise that was part of their marketing campaign (the product literature on BestBuy still says that the 2019 A9G is AirPlay 2 and HomeKit compatible).
So as I sit staring at this outrageously costly 65” example of gimmicky obsolescence on my living room wall, receiving this breathless news that Sony’s rolling out new models that have the promised capabilities still unfilled on my unit, along with Android 9.0 and a bunch of new features, kinda doesn’t hit the spot.
It rather makes me fantasize about taking my A9G to Best Buy, finding the Magnolia salesperson who duped me, donning him with a big red clown nose, and Airplaying a live feed of a line of A9G owners queuing up to punch it.
There, I kinda feel a bit better!