BBC iPlayer missing since Android TV v8 update

[psellwood]

I recently upgraded my Sony KD-49XD8305 to Android TV v8 and, whilst everything else continues to work, BBC iPlayer has disappeared and is no longer visible in the App Store.

I can’t find anything else online mentioning this issue and can only think that iPlayer hasn’t been updated to work with the latest OS yet.

Is anyone else having this problem? Does anyone have a fix or workaround?

[royabrown2]

@HarshReality 

Still no model number provided then, but from your description it sounds as if it is from a few years back.

Rokus don’t run on Android, so don’t have to suffer any of the compromises that Sony has had to make because their TVs do.

Nobody will tell us what went wrong between Sony and YouView, and whose fault it is that YouView on Sony is a pale shadow of YouView on YouView boxes, that the promised recording capability never arrived, and that the apps provided through YouView arrived with near-crippling limitations and compromises on their access and use; both the things you mention and many others.

A Roku Express is actually the saving grace on our 2020 LG TVs, as they arrived without itv Hub and All4, and though we got itv Hub a year later, and now even have itvX, All4 has never arrived since. Starting from broadcast TV, All4 on Roku is two clicks away, exactly the same as itvX in the LG native apps. So no more complex at all.

[HarshReality]

My model is a KE65XH8196, a 2020 model bought in 2021.

Roku OS is based on Linux as is Android. So they are stablemates. And, again, for an older less tech person having another device to manage and switch to the correct external input etc. It all becomes confusing and unnecessarily complicated when you just want a TV that works as advertised!

iPlayer is separately frustrating. The TV version only allows you to return to the start of the programme and not 2 hours as it does on pc/tablet/phone. And as programmes take a while to become available on iPlayer you end up with av recent period where you can't watch. Which is equally rubbish. 

[royabrown2]

@HarshReality said:

“Roku OS is based on Linux as is Android. So they are stablemates.”

Yes, and chalk and cheese both begin with ‘ch’ 😛

As I said before, if you want an easy to use TV, you don’t want a Sony. For their straightforwardness, my wife prefers Samsungs. Though having mastered a couple of easy tricks (Home button for the apps, Input button to choose an input) I can get round our LGs much quicker and easier than I can a Samsung.

[SkyNet404]

You can assign buttons to easy access the inputs, or make it that it turns on to the input directly, and it's not really that complicated thinking about it. 

[daveq2]

Thank you - that fixed the thepboelm, which we've had for ages. Your solution wasnt quite the same on my 2019 KD43X, but close enough. Now iplayer is not on the main apps screen, but under the app Sony Select

[royabrown2]

@daveq2 

Yes - as I said, there have been at least three, possibly four, iterations of YouView on Sony TVs since 2015, and they are not just software updates, they are baked in to the model release year, and the rules change each time, so a bunch of people asking how to solve YouView problems, and a bunch of people explaining how to do this, will utterly founder unless everybody is crystal clear about which model of Sony TV they are talking about.

You sound like you have the 2020 model year YouView, which was backported to some, but not all, 2019  sets.

But I stand by my view that the best thing to do with any of these sets is to invest in a Roku Express, preferably the 4K model, or even better the Roku Stick, plug that into an HDMI port on the TV, and use that for the apps. Those apps that overlap with the YouView-provided apps will be faster, more modern, and not tied into the various absurd restrictions that have been placed on the YouView apps, even the latest iterations, over the years.

It doesn’t matter, to the regular user, if the Roku OS is Android-based, or Linux-based, or whatever; it presents a clean and simple UI that anyone ought to be able to understand.

Tinkerers will use a Raspberry Pi instead anyway 😛