First of all, there's lots of Sony gear in my house. About as much Sony gear as Apple gear. Roughly: 5 TVs; PS2; PS3; 3xDVD players; DSLR. It's fair to say that I like Sony gear.
Today, I happened to see the box for a Sony Blu-Ray player. I didn't go browsing for it on Amazon or Play. I didn't see the model on display in a shop. It didn't see it in an email circular. I saw the physical box.
This is not something that normally happens. The other stuff does, but usually the box is about the last thing you see, briefly, before it's thrown away and long after a buying decision is made.
The significance of this is that the box was a better advertisment for the product than anything else I've seen, which means all the other advertising is rubbish. I'm not really in the market for a blu-ray player. My son's PS3 will play them, but I've never bought a blu-ray disc. I couldn't be bothered to pay more when I bought DVDs, and now that I've subscribed to Netflix, physical media for movies just seems plain odd to me. A Blu-Ray player is perfectly fine for playing all those old DVDs, but it'd need some additional features to make it interesting…
Back to the box. In nice big clear icons and logos is a list of key features of device. Other than the usual, what catches my eye is a Netflix logo and a Lovefilm logo. Interesting.
Currently my daughter can access Netflix via her Wii. She doesn't have a connected TV. My son can access via his PS3. His TV is connected, but he has a PS3, so it may as well not be. The TV in the master bedroom is the same as my son's. We have a DVD player hooked up with SCART and can watch iPlayer via the TV and WiFi. We don't have access to Netflix from that TV. The living room TV is smart, but doesn't have WiFi (which is another story). We have a V+ box for iPlayer, 4OD etc, and an AppleTV for music and Netflix (but not Lovefilm).
The fifth TV, and AppleTV, live at my mid-week digs (I commute weekly to work).
We can disconnect the Apple TV and move it to the bedroom, but almost never do.
The ideal, pie-in-the-sky solution would be a firmware upgrade from Sony to add Netflix to the TV. I suspect that there's no incentive for Sony to do that though other than making people think that Sony products and customer support are the freakin' awesomes.
An actual solution would be to replace the DVD player with the WiFi version of the one I saw (link). It's £30 extra, which is a bit steep, but possibly worth it for the symbolic removal of one more hated SCART cable from the house.
When I was looking for the WiFi enabled version, given the lack of Netflix support on many Sony devices, I wanted to check this feature. From the Sony website, it's impossible to find out. The product page simply does not mention Netflix or Lovefilm. Search the site for Netflix, and these players simple don't show up in the results.
Amazon pages weren't much better. Either finding the devices in results for netflix players or the using the specific device product codes. If searching the pages for Netflix, even with additional information open, it's not until you hit the user reviews that there's any clue.
Honestly, if I hadn't seen the box - and most people won't see the box - I'd be utterly clueless that this product existed.
I can approach this from another angle. From the 'Ways to Watch' page at Netflix https://signup.netflix.com/Watch. This tells me that I can watch via PS3, Sony Blue-Ray players and smart TVs. For BR Player and TV, it's just a link to the Sony site, which is pretty much a dead end. If you manage to navigate to http://www.sony.co.uk/hub/internet-tv/entertainment-on-demand, there's no mention of Netflix (the LoveFilm logo is shown). Note that there's no link to Sony streaming players because neither of them currently support Netflix (according to reviews).
Note: Can't currently add screenshots from Sony Site because, and I shit ye not:
If I click on the Western Digital link from Netflix, I immediately see a product shot and a Netflix logo: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=330, there's a link to a logo grid of actual services I can get on the device. Lovefilm isn't there, but I'm confident that this isn't ano oversight, it's not available on the WDTV yet. Netflix and iPlayer have a 'new for UK' banner, which also suggests that the device is getting active updates. I wouldn't be surprised to see Lovefilm listed in the near future.
Roku gets it right too:
Phillips isn't great, but much better than Sony. The landing page from Netflix is to the streaming players, but only one of them appears to be Netflix capable. On the plus side, this is mentioned in a bullet point on that page, and when opening the device page, there are a couple of Netflix logos to make it clear that it's supported. (Also no Lovefilm here).
Then there's Apple. The landing page is http://www.apple.com/uk/, but should probably be http://www.apple.com/uk/appletv/. There's no obvious way to find the Apple TV device from the front page. You can get to it through the iPod link, but that makes little sense. If you search for 'Netflix' or 'TV' or 'Movies', however, you'll find a link.
Once on the right page, there's immediately a Netflix logo on the picture of the TV and Netflix is mentioned in the HD Content box. Further, if you click on 'What's on Apple TV', again the Netflix logo is prominent in a grid (not unlike the Sony BR Player's box). Clicking on the logo jumps the a dedicated Netflix portion of the page, though there's no link back to Netflix to sign up for some reason.
I've no idea what the boxes for Phillips, Roku and WD are like, but I do know what the Apple TV box looks like. It's just some pictures of the product and the minimum amount of legalese required. It's not advertising what it can do, because if you're buying it, you've already figured that out.
Sony needs to change its website. The approach should prioritise actual features that people give a shit about, like Netflix, over marketing bullshit such as "See shows in every shade of colour - With Triluminos Colour you’ll enjoy brilliant images and a wide range of colours which add depth to any scene".
'Triluminous' doesn't even seem to be a feature of the device, it's something* to do with LCD TVs that you don't care about. It may be that you need a triluminous aware player to get your triluminous enabled TV to do triluminous things, but if you're buying a Netflix player because your current TV or slightly dumb smart TV doesn't do Netflix, you'll be trilouminless .
If the website's difficult to manage for some reason, that may point to a larger problem. If it would be impossible to simplify the website with the current range of products, that probably points to a deeper issue.
I really, really want Sony to survive, reinvent and then thrive. I think they can do it, but not without a fundamental re-think. Firstly, make considered, truly designed, great products rather than just making everything and seeing what sticks. Then market the hell out of them without resorting to bullshit.
*TRILUMINOS is a revolution in television colour reproduction. The slim TRILUMINOS LED backlight gives superior colour reproduction and increased depth to the picture. The technology developed by Sony uses separate LEDs for red, green and blue. As LEDs emit purer reds and greens, they produce a brighter and more uniform light that captures the true colours of the source. The result is a screen filled with a rich range of colours that are truer to life.
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