Hi, re the new firmware.
For what it's worth it's my opinion that this firmware upgrade is in breach of UK consumer law in that Sony do not have the right to change the product it has sold to us without us being given the opportunity of informed consent and then declining it. Anything in it''s conditions that contradicts and removes that basic consumer protected right is an "unfair term" and unenforceable.
Obviously if on the other hand we had still been in the EU or this had been done to comply with UK law then compliance with national regulations would have placed them with the obligation of compliance and we then couldn't object. As we have no obligation to comply with EU law - Sony haven't apparently noticed we left to avoid this rubbish - they have forced on us a change to the product it needn't have done and made a change none of us would have chosen that has damaged the product. I'm not even confident that there is an EU regulation that compelled Sony to warn me every time that I might use more power when I was making it dimmer and presumably using less power. I also think it is wasting power to wrongly warn me of this.
I think that we have two options.
I think we could individually take action against the retailer (we have no contract directly with Sony) and demand to be compensated for an an unwanted uneccessary change or for the firmware to be rolled back. Frankly I think most of us would not really want to face doing this.
I have another suggestion. I think the only thing that will make Sony take notice is if it's own commerical interests are put at risk. What I therefore suggest is that on all post 2018 screens Sony threads and all new screens forward, as soon as owners have this new "feature" they alert threads and warn potential prospective UK customers contemplating purchasing that they should understand that this new "feature" radically reduces the usability of the set and that they might consider alternative manufacturers.
Perhaps this also might catch the eye of some Tech magazines and journalists and they might take what is clearly quite foolish behaviour up and shame them. I cannot believe that this approach of using more power to make repeated reminders when customers are when dimming is what the regulators said or intended.
Just to save anyone feeling the need to attack me, I state the obvious in that not all custromers will think this new "feature" too troublesome. But whether it is or not I think as a customer of any product - let alone one costing many thousands - I think it worthwhile fighting to retain the the right of not having the great product we purchased reduced arbitrarily by the manufacturer for no just reason but simply because they couldn't be bothered to respect their British customers for the small amount of effort they could have taken to produce a delivery method of a UK compliant firmware update - or simply a way of turning it off.
All the best all.
Jeff
