Hi, I completely agree with Tarzion, the firmware 3.169 on my KD-55X8507C, which was bought in November 2015 in EU, is worse than the previous 3.155.
My TV now, sporadically at its own will, turns on. For example, during the night or when no-one is at home. Frequency of this unwanted behaviour: daily. This behaviour was only once observed also with 3.155.
On the other hand, the TV now has a very strong determination not to switch off. Sometimes I can switch it off for 5 or 6 times in a row, but the TV will always turn itself on agaian after a few seconds. In such occasions the white light below the screen does not switch on. After so many unsuccessful tries to switch the TV off I usually perform a reset. This helps for some time.
My common observation is that with increasing time, after the TV has been reset, the problems become more frequent or new problems emerge. This to me looks like memory leaks or improper management of device's memory pool or poor application initialisation.
Even though this thread is about blank screen with sound still on, I have to admit that I havent noticed this kind of error with 3.155 of 3.169. I noticed it in previous versions, this was the reason that I joined this thread in the first place.
I strongly suggest to Sony to defer the planned February release of new updated functionality firmware for a longer period of time, e.g. six months. During this time Sony should devote all its efforts to rigorous testing, debugging and defect resolution, with focus on critical and serious errors, as well as to speeding the normal TV operations (e.g. changing of digital channels is three times longer than on a three years old Bravia, the change from watching digital TV to Guide is also very long with 2 (two) black screens in between - too much time also takes going back from Guide to the digital TV, etc.).
The application Video is still very buggy and lacks functionality:
- The <- button does not start rewinding until you first press -> for fast forwarding.
- If you play a video from DLNA NAS, then stop watching video (e.g. go to digital TV), then go back to Video app it is very likely that the application will not be able to connect back to the NAS or to show its file structure
- Info button is not active (it could show the similar type of information as during digital TV - current time, date, remaining time, name of file, properties of file...)
I could not find any usefull/detailed explanations on all TV settings (eg. for picture, for sound...), I simply do not know what to set and how to get what I want.
The volume of different digital channels, inputs or applications is not equalised - for such an intelligent TV this should not pose a problem: to monitor the volume and normalise it to an equal level across all channels/inputs /applications.
The remote controller with thrack pad is not very user friendly, I find it hard to use in a consistent way (tracking and clicking are not as good as on PC track pads). Beside this cumebrsome use I miss the Info and Guide buttons on this remote. Therefore I rather use the IR remote (which does not have the microphone input). So, instead of having just one useful remote, I have to use two semi-useful remotes.
The menues and user interfaces are inconsitent, the analogue Tv, the digital TV and the Android TV apps behave quite differently.
Despite all the flaws described above, I thnk that the picture quality is superb, and this is the only reason why I haven't yet returned the TV back to the retailer. But I'm slowly getting impatient, seeing that the quality of firmware corrections is going in the wrong direction.
I hope Sony will stop releasing rubbish firmware updates and start doing the proper job. It's about time.
