Sony To Drop Gracenote In 2019

[Wombat]

https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/...players-recorders/bdp-s6700/articles/00203380

 

[amirm]

Licensing metadata costs millions of dollars per year. So not surprising that they are not seeing the return on that investment.

 

[restorer-john]

Licensing metadata costs millions of dollars per year. So not surprising that they are not seeing the return on that investment.

Yes, and Sony knew it would cost them when they signed up.

This is another case of products being sold and advertised with certain capabilities that a reasonable purchaser would expect to able to use for the usable service life of their machine. If they really cared, the firmware 'update' (should be called a down-date if you ask me) would add a way of accessing free.db or another alternative music/video database.

This type of product feature feature deprecation will prove a minefield of litigation down the track, if it isn't already.

Not a good look for Sony as they appear to be removing the feature in only these markets, although a similar message is on Sony.com too but with no country listing....

• Europe Region
  • Albania
  • Andorra
  • Austria
  • Azerbaijan
  • Belarus
  • Belgium
  • Bosnia and Herzegovina
  • Bulgaria
  • Croatia
  • Cyprus
  • Czech Republic
  • Denmark
  • Estonia
  • Finland
  • France
  • Georgia
  • Germany
  • Greece
  • Hungary
  • Iceland
  • Italy
  • Kazakhstan
  • Latvia
  • Liechtenstein
  • Lithuania
  • Luxembourg
  • Macedonia
  • Malta
  • Moldova
  • Monaco
  • Montenegro
  • Netherlands
  • Norway
  • Poland
  • Portugal
  • Republic of Ireland
  • Romania
  • Russia
  • San Marino
  • Serbia
  • Slovakia
  • Slovenia
  • Spain
  • Sweden
  • Switzerland
  • Turkey
  • Ukraine
  • United Kingdom
  • Vatican City

 

[JJB70]

The dropping of features used as part of a specification when advertising and selling a product is where this gets problematic. I tend to agree that if a supplier removes functionality which was advertised at point of sale then the buyer should be entitled to return it or receive some sort of compensatory payment as they have lost something which they paid for.

 

[HalArmstrong]

POSSIBLE SOLUTION: I did not look, but often various players and TVs has "factory reset". Has anyone tried "factory reset" on a Sony BluRay player to see if GraceNote will work again?

 

[SMc]

POSSIBLE SOLUTION: I did not look, but often various players and TVs has "factory reset". Has anyone tried "factory reset" on a Sony BluRay player to see if GraceNote will work again?

I haven’t done a reset but I believe the player will require a system update afterwards.

My Sony recently lost Netflix and Amazon apps.

 

[HalArmstrong]

Wow, I do recall the day when Amazon disappeared. The Netflix logo still appears but looks old and does not work, Luckily, both Amazon and Netflix are options on my Smart TV. This would be a nightmare for a non-smart TV (like a dumb but perfectly functional Plasma with no ethernet).

I chose the Sony BDP-S790 over others because it had support for Super Audio CD (SACD) playback (although not many artists offered material other than the Rolling Stones).

So we have 3 strikes:

• No Gracenote
• No Netflix
• No Amazon Prime Video

Are there other brands still offering Gracenote? I'd rather not have additional components, but seeing artist and track that is playing is a great feature.

It is a sad state of affairs to see features advertised on the box to be withdrawn for corporate profit.

PS -- Reset to factory settings did not bring back Gracenote. I guess you can go forward but not backward in firmware updates.