Share your experience!
I have recently ditched Sky and now watch TV via various apps and only online.
I have apps for ITVx and Channel 5 but when I open them, YouView opens instead. I dont have any sort of digi box and no TV aerial.so YouView doesn't work.
I have tried to disable YouView but there is no disable button.
My TV is a Sony KD-55XD8599 and is about 6 years old.
How can I get these apps working properly?
That’s a 2016 Sony TV, so a little more than six years old, and from the first full year Sony were using YouView.
It makes an excellent monitor, but without an aerial, you won’t be able to get these players to work, since in 2016, YouView required the TV channels to be tuned in before the broadcaster apps it supports would run.
So I could give you all the workarounds - keep an internal aerial to do a one-time tune, after which you can disconnect it until the next set of Freeview changes, or box reset needed, whichever is the sooner;
exit YouView (it can be done) and use the Hoshsadiq patch to sideload the apps, which otherwise will only work on the YouView ‘side’ - but still needs the aerial tuning done…..
But the apps won’t give you live TV, only catchup, and they will be dog slow, old, and limited 😢
So what you do is buy yourself a Roku device - a Roku Express 4K £40 or, if you can run to it, a Roku Streaming Stick £50 - avoiding the Roku Express HD, tempting at £30, but a much lesser device.
Amazon, Curry’s, Argos, Very, etc.
Plug it into an HDMI input on the TV, nothing more to spend unless you want to subscribe to one or more streaming services, but you will get the BBC iPlayer, itvX, Channel Four, My 5, all with the live channels as well as catchup. Plus a plethora of other apps if you want, far more than the Sony TV, with or without YouView, can offer.
And all bang up-to-date, kept up-to-date, and as fast as you could want, as it just uses the excellent screen smarts of the Sony TV, bypassing the aging 2016 hardware of the Sony that YouView has to rely on.
Thank you so much for the detailed reply!
I have already tried an indoor aerial but it seems I don't have a good signal here as I couldn't get it to work.
However, the Roku device sounds like just what I need. I'll give one of those a go!
Thank you again.