Sony Bravia KD32W800

[johntheo]

Bought one of these recently. it has a Freeview tuner, I also have a external Freesat box. I have my (rabbits ears) Antenna cable plugged into the TV socket and the Freesat box cable into the TV HDMI 1 socket, the Satellite cable is plugged into the Freesat box. Works fine as set up, I just select HDMI 1 for my Freesat stations and select Freeview Live TV which gives me the usual Irish channels, known as Saorview, after scanning in "Antenna" mode.                               

 If I connect the Satellite cable into the TV port (with the antenna remaining in the TV socket and I change the TV tuner from antenna to satellite and do a scan on my usual Astra2 28.2E, to get all the free to air channels, I get the hundreds of Freeview channels but I lose all the Irish channels that I had via the antenna tuning (of the Freeview TV tuner). In other words, I only seem to either have the Satellite scanned channels OR the Antenna scanned channels, but not both. Can I have both the Satellite channels and the antenna channels available together without using a external box, like I have on my KDL32W5810, no external box required (and I have Freesat, even better than Freeview for me.). I have carried out a factory reset and scanned with both the Antenna and the Satellite cables plugged into the TV, but still can only get one or the other.

Specifications Of the Sony Bravia KD32W800

NUMBER OF TUNERS (TERRESTRIAL/CABLE)

1(Digital/Analog)

NUMBER OF TUNERS (SAT)

1

TV SYSTEM (ANALOG)

B/G,D/K,L

TUNER CHANNEL COVERAGE (ANALOG)

45.25MHz-863.25MHz(Depend on country/area selection)

TV SYSTEM (DIGITAL TERRESTRIAL)

DVB-T/T2

TUNER CHANNEL COVERAGE (DIGITAL TERRESTRIAL)

VHF/UHF(Depend on country selection)

TV SYSTEM (DIGITAL CABLE)

DVB-C

TUNER CHANNEL COVERAGE (DIGITAL CABLE)

VHF/UHF/cable, Depend on country selection

TV SYSTEM (DIGITAL SAT)

DVB-S/S2

TUNER CHANNEL COVERAGE (DIGITAL SAT)

Intermediate Frequency 950-2150MHz

CI+

Yes

[EMS_MO72]

Hey

Just to make sure I got you correctly, so whenever you tune one of the 2 reception connection that you have, the channel of the other reception disappears?

[johntheo]

Thats correct, but as (tried) to explain above it looks like I am only dealing with one tuner.

John

[johntheo]

The only words of wisdom from Sony was to check that the software version was 16069 or higher, which it was.

[royabrown2]

@johntheo @EMS_MO72 

You are definitely dealing with two tuners, as Terrestrial is tuned on the DVB-T/T2 tuner, and Satellite on the DVB-S/S2 tuner.

But what I think is happening is that the TV does not have the capacity to hold both sets of tunings at once, so as you swap from one to the other, you get overwriting and replacement, not addition.

But I am utterly unable to find any information on the web to confirm or deny this hypothesis, and the Sony paper manuals for today’s TVs take ‘uninformative’ to new heights 😢

I don’t know if there is anything in the online Help on your TV? 

I do know that the early Android sets has a similar limitation where you could either have YouView or Satellite tuning, but not both at once.

Pretty lame……

[johntheo]

Got another email from Sony, here.

Thank you for contacting Sony support.
With reference to your enquiry regarding your KD-32W800, we are sorry to learn that you are unable to get the Freesat and the Freeview channels at the same time.
We can confirm that you can get them both, but not at the same time.
In other words, you will be able to switch between sources.
In your case, and just to confirm, do you get any Freesat channels when you tune after connecting the satellite cable directly to the TV? Or some of them?
Do you disconnect the box?
Did you ever check with an antenna specialist to adjust the connections?
In the meanwhile, you can try the below steps:
1- Disconnect any external devices connected to the TV.
2- Unplug the main power cord of the TV, and plug it back after 60 seconds.
3- Check if your TV has the latest software version: v16069 (Help - Status and Diagnostics - System Information):
If not the latest, please find the below link to update the TV:
https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/lcd-tvs-android-w80x-series/kd-32w800/software/00262461
4- Clear the cached data from the TV internal shared storage following the below steps:
(Home - Settings - Device Preferences - Storage - Internal Shared Storage - Cached Data - Clear).

[johntheo]

Have cleared the cached data which went from 29MB to 16MB after the first "clear" but remains at this 16MB after subsequent "clearing", is this normal?.

[EMS_MO72]

@johntheo 

yes, it's the maximum that can be cleared, I guess

Stay in touch with Sony if the channels issue is still the same, so they can investigate further about it 

As you should be receiving both receptions at the same time 

[johntheo]

Another bit of info, if i have done the last scan on the antenna (which gives me Saorview only) and then go back to to Satellite, it gives two choices, Satellite Rescan or Satellite Update, if I select Satellite Rescan it asks if I want to carry on as I will lose all the allready saved channels which implies that the channels are stored somewhere,  if I select Satellite Update it doesn't find any more channels which makes sense but if I then go to Freeview expecting to see my allready "saved" channels then I only get 4 or 5 channels in all so i just do a full Satellite Rescan again.

Also if I have done my last scan on Antenna (my usual mode) and I press the + button (this the OK button on a lot of remotes) on the remote I get a menu that gives a choice of  "All Channels", "HD Channels" (I get 3 on Saorview) "Favorites" (none saved) "Radio Channels" (plennty of those) and "Interactive Channels" which gives a choice of 3, 854SU,855SU & 856SU, all of which just display "no audio and video"

If I do a Satellite Rescan to get my Freeview channels, I can select the meny with the same.... All channels, (hundreds) HD Channels,(dozens) Favorites, (none saved), Radio Channels (lots of these) and the interesting one, Interactive Channels which gives dozens of choices but alas, no sign of my elusive Saorview channels, most of he choices just display "no audio and video" there are a few TV & radio channels. Freesat Home is also on the menu but I get the same  "no audio and video", Freesat Info is also there but just shows a full screen display of it,

[royabrown2]

@johntheo @EMS_MO72 

I presume you meant Freesat, not Freeview, in your last paragraph?

But when Sony say, above, “We can confirm that you can get them both, but not at the same time”, I am interpreting that to mean that it is as I described above, and is the normal operation of this TV, so there’s nothing to fix here, just a rather unsatisfactory limitation of the tuning design on this TV 😢