Those of you with Sony Bravia TVs will probably be aware of this latest problem and may be interested to join the forum on the Sony Community website.

Here is the link and there you find the ongoing conversation not just about the TV but more importantly how BBC pulled the plug so to speak on iPlayer on the BD/DVD player last year. Many of you like I would have bought this device because it could receive iPlayer which ceased four years later.

https://community.sony.co.uk/t5/tele...r/td-p/2058517

Re: [Nov 2015] BBC iPlayer - Temporarily cannot access the server
If the Sony official line is that of the reply to Krusher_59 and that's the end of it for them, then I certainly know where I won't be spending any of my cash in the future. And I am amazed how many family and friends I have when I think about it! There are other brands out there that are just as reliable.
But I still cannot get my head around that Sony would choose to hide behind the BBC decision rather than update the software to link to the new iplayer. Maybe we have all been fooled and our Bravia TVs aren't as technically advanced as all the other brands that continue to work. But what can that be? Is there an issue of memory size within Sony TVs that can't phsically accommodate a new iplayer software link?
I will still wait a while a while before exploding. Hopefully Sony will very shortly broadcast what they are doing to make their TVs and Bluray iplayer accessible, or let the world know what TV and Bluray player models are now OBSOLETE.

I highly recommend in the meantime you get yourself something like a Now TV Box. It'll just set you back £15, and cover the BBC iPlayer along with the others perfectly well.

Sure, there may be a principle behind an argument regarding the loss of the iPlayer on the Sony TV, but being angry about it won't bring it back. £15 isn't a lot of money and will.

£15 is less than a single meal at a basic, cheap restaurant, and will cover your iPlayer needs for at least another couple of years.

Thank you ovbg for the recommendation and yesterday I purchased a Now TV box. The only irritation is it is another couple of trailing leads that are either too short or too long plus the power adaptor.

That aside, and if anyone is following this subject on the Sony Community Forum, there has been a suggestion that even though the Sony or BBC have yet to put their hands up and inform the consumer what is in fact happening with the iPlayer. One post member of that forum is suggesting this is all to do with BBC planning to go over to a subscription type service on the iPlayer.

No worries, and year, it would be so much better if there were fewer cables. HDMI sticks are one option, although the Roku version costs a lot more than the Now TV.

From what I can tell, the problem is both Sony and the BBC. On one hand Sony is moving away from their older OS and pushing Android TV right now. The TV you have has quite an old OS that although was great when it came out, it can't cope with the influx of new apps and has very high overheads for Sony to maintain. Sony, as you probably know, are in serious trouble right now and they have been doing very badly in the television area.

The BBC also have issues. Their iPlayer is available on a huge range of devices, and maintaining this costs them a lot of money. Money, as you may have heard, is becoming a serious issue with the BBC, especially as we have a Tory government who is quite determined to cut their funding, and a population who is becoming increasingly against spending money.

The BBC has long been campaigning for industry standards in on-demand apps to create an open platform that would make supporting devices a lot cheaper and easier. The costs of supporting older platforms that are no longer widely used is crippling the BBC development team and they unfortunately need to cut back on some of these older platforms that can't support the latest versions, or are just not widely used. This can even be seen with newer platforms with Android TV being the best example - the iPlayer is still not available there yet.

As for the subscription service, this is nothing more than discussions at high levels right now, and it is certainly not the reason the BBC is pulling out of Sony's older sets. Adding a subscription feature is not a technical difficulty and a single basic update could do this. Adding subscription to the iPlayer is however a huge political storm on the other hand, and that has nothing to do with Sony. If the BBC did do this, it would effectively mean the end of the BBC as we know it. Just look at other catch-up services from the giant broadcasters in the US where they are effectively subscription services, and they are tiny in comparison to the iPlayer, so let's hope that never happens.

What makes the BBC so amazing is a combination of its independence from subscribers, ratings and government, as well as its mandate and funding method. If it becomes subscriber based, it will be purely ratings based, meaning the lowest denominator shows with the highest ratings will be financed, and with a lower population than the US, this will mean a lot less chance of HBO level quality.

Thank you, most enlightening.

Just one point about BBC funding and what I cannot understand is the government making hard work in how to simply do this. As I understand it watching BBC on iPlayer you do not need a TV licence and this is reflected in both the drop in the number of TVs being sold and therefore the licence. In France, I believe they introduced a flat fee TV licence that went onto every home owners local tax bill and if you didn't own a TV you could apply to have that charge removed, but I think you had to be able to prove it.

Probably won't work with the iPlayer being available on computers, especially those laptops, tablets and smart phones, but if you have a home and pay the local tax, surely that would cover it?

I don't know it all, and is just a simple opinion of mine.

TV's are getting like computers were a few years ago, constantly needing updates to hardware to make them run the latest software.

I wish they'd stop all this "smart" crap and just give us a decent TV, those that want the smart features can go out and buy a cheap box. Those that don't, don't need to pay for it.

^^ re above post, then thats the BBC's fault for allowing it to happen, anyone with half a brain cell, would of seen this coming. I don't think the decline in TV sales has anything to do with it. It's just people are fed up with feeling the need to update a TV every few years to jump on the latest "band wagon". First it was HD ready, then HD, then 3d, then Smart, then 4k and now UHD and even talk of skipping UHD and going straight to 8k.

Lets face it most people couldn't give a toss or even see a massive difference between HD ready and HD, and are starting to say enough. Like I said above it's what damaged the PC market for years the constant or at least perceived constant need to upgrade, hence consoles became more popular.

Believe it or not, few saw the development and rapid growth of catch-up TV before it actually took off. We have to keep in mind that television, despite the advent of pay-tv (satellite) and recordings, hasn't changed much since most people's lifetime - until now that is. PVRs changed a lot how we watched TV, but basic TV was the same, even if originally it was just a couple of linear TV channels, and then later, lots of them by different transmission means - at the end of the day, we still had a TV with a receiver and watched for the most part, linear TV.

The BBC was one of the first in the world to take on VOD, and still to this day they are the bench mark. There is not one better VOD service from any terrestrial broadcaster in the world, whichever country you look at than the BBC and their iPlayer. But even they were taken by surprise by how popular it would all become.

With so many people choosing to watch the BBC from an iPlayer only - just to save paying the license fee, the BBC are really feeling the pinch, especially when the license fee still finances the iPlayer and its development, so they have little choice but to include the license fee as a requirement in the future.

One idea is the German method (which is what I think you meant by the French one), where they changed recently to charge it at a household level. It is pretty much impossible to get out of it in Germany, as anything in the house including a Raspberry Pi can be used to watch TV. And this is probably the method the UK will follow soon.

But there are plenty of other ideas being floated about, like the subscription service, or (please no), by donation only (no, because then it will end up like a mini version of PBS), or by direct tax like in Australia (which means the government gets more of their fingers in the pie and the services gets less funding... ABC iView in Australia doesn't even offer standard definition because that costs too much).

It certainly is interesting times ahead...

In theory I could ditch my TV License, but feel I should pay something to domestic broadcasting. Wether I'd be happy if I was forced to is another matter!