topic Re: All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView in Android TV

All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView

maf13r — Tue, 31 May 2016 09:27:27 GMT

I have a Sony Bravia KD-49X8309C, I seem to have a problem trying to access All4, 5OD & ITV Player. When i click on the apps for them they take me to a YouView page to search for a TV signal but i dont use a TV Aerial. Are these not stand alone apps (like i have on my Amazon Fire TV stick) & can only run through youview, If so its a smart TV thats not very smart. Iv even tried to look for them on Google play store as its an Android TV but there not on there.

Re: All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView

Anonymous — Tue, 31 May 2016 16:25:01 GMT

Hi there

Unfortunately All4 and ITVHub are not standalone apps and are indeed tied to YouView. The solution is to get al least one channel tuned in on the tv and the apps 'should' then work without an aerial connected. Do you have a portable aerial around or can you borrow one?

Cheers

Re: All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView

maf13r — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 08:38:10 GMT

Good thinking, I'll try that. If I do tune the TV in with an Aerial im guessing I'll have to keep the aerial plugged into the TV to be able to use the apps or do they then download to TV once it thinks its tuned in?

Re: All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView

Anonymous — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 19:37:22 GMT

Hi there

I havent tested this in a while, but once at least one channel was tuned in, you used to be able to then disconnect the aerial, and All4 and ITVHub apps would still work - as long as YouView is not disabled that is.

Cheers

Re: All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView

royabrown — Sun, 05 Jun 2016 16:03:21 GMT

@maf13r wrote:
Good thinking, I'll try that. If I do tune the TV in with an Aerial im guessing I'll have to keep the aerial plugged into the TV to be able to use the apps or do they then download to TV once it thinks its tuned in?

The apps download when you activate YouView, but you can't use them if you have never tuned the TV to an aerial.

But once you have, even just one channel, you can disconnect the aerial indefinitely.

oh, and it's just the ITV Hub and All4 that require this by requiring YouView. The BBC iPlayer and My5 are provided by Sony, outside of YouView.

If you can't get My5, then, you must have another, different, issue. Can you get the BBC iPlayer OK?

Re: All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView

Machman2017 — Sat, 11 Feb 2017 14:29:00 GMT

Thanks to all on this forum for suggestions to solve the "YouView"/"freesat" problem.

Unfortunaltely, the reason I had to switch to FreeSat (from Freeview) is that since our local transmitter went fully digital Ihave not been able to get an aerial signal !!!!!

So as far as my new Sont TV is concerned, the youview feature (with ITV/Ch4) is useless.

Come on Sony - sort this out please.

Re: All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView

royabrown — Sat, 11 Feb 2017 16:19:25 GMT

@Machman2017 wrote:
Thanks to all on this forum for suggestions to solve the "YouView"/"freesat" problem.
Unfortunaltely, the reason I had to switch to FreeSat (from Freeview) is that since our local transmitter went fully digital Ihave not been able to get an aerial signal !!!!!
So as far as my new Sont TV is concerned, the youview feature (with ITV/Ch4) is useless.
Come on Sony - sort this out please.

There's no Freesat on the Sonys either (Freesat is essentially a satellite EPG) but I guess you mean the Now/Next sort-of-EPG that you do get with satellite.

And since activating YouView disables satellite - and not merely disables it, but deletes all your tunings as well - it really is something you should steer clear of.

Since Sony are unlikely to add the itv Hub and All4 standalone, and YouView is equally unlikely to start playing nice with satellite and/or allow recording, my unvarying advice is to buy a NowTV box (£15, and no need to subscribe to NowTV itself, unless you want to) plug it into one of your several HDMI ports, and use that for these two catch-up players.

Or even, for £0, the built-in Chromecast and your smartphone or tablet with these apps on, if you find that convenient. (I don't, but that's just me, perhaps).

Re: All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView

Machman2017 — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 09:45:10 GMT

Ty royalbrown.

It's not a totally desperate situation - have a games console that we can get the itvHub and All4 through - just a real disappointment to have purchased an "all in one" TV and discover that its not quite as "all in one" as was lead to believe.

Really think that the FreeSat/Youview "feature" should be made more apparent to people puchasing these TV's.

Re: All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView

royabrown — Sun, 12 Feb 2017 23:44:15 GMT

@Machman2017 wrote:
Ty royalbrown.
It's not a totally desperate situation - have a games console that we can get the itvHub and All4 through - just a real disappointment to have purchased an "all in one" TV and discover that its not quite as "all in one" as was lead to believe.
Really think that the FreeSat/Youview "feature" should be made more apparent to people puchasing these TV's.

Thanks for the crowning, but there's no 'l' in my online name 🙂

Glad you have an alternate source for itv and All4 catch-up.

Yes, I just read a couple of Android TV specs on the Sony website, and you have to dig a fair way down, and pull up the Footnotes specially to read:-

2. This feature will be available before 31st March. However, due to the technical complexity implementing this feature, the final release date(s) stipulated on our support site may be subject to change.For PiP/PaP feature Browser/Tuner, USB/Tuner, Tuner/Tuner combinations are not available. NOTE: HDD recording (REC) and Satellite features are not available if YouView functionality is enabled. YouView on Sony TVs will offer consumers a consistent and easy to use YouView experience, including scroll back, search, discover and catch up TV (BBC iPlayer, ITV Player, All 4 and Demand 5). YouView functionality includes access to all the normal free-to-air channels via the YouView guide and mini guide.

That's 31 March 2016, by the way, so Sony is obviously letting the details languish 🙂

And in other footnotes elsewhere, it qualifies the comments about the itv player by saying the features may be limited in Scotland and Northern Ireland.

But nowhere can I find anything to say that the itv and All4 Players are only available with YouView. Unless that is in yet another set of obscure footnotes I can't find?

Re: All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView

daveybuntu — Wed, 02 Oct 2019 21:13:29 GMT

Hi I'm having the same issue. I don't think this solution works though because if I press the Guide button on my TV remote, it brings up the YouView TV guide rather than the standard Sony/Freeview guide, or in my case, it should display the Freesat TV guide.

It seems that if you want to access the ITV or Channel 4 apps via your Sony TV, you are forced to enable YouView. In doing so, your guide button can ONLY activate the YouView TV guide.

I have no interest in this as I actually don't even have an aerial connected to my TV as I watch everything via Freesat.

Surely there is a way of setting the TV to be able to use these two apps and to completely remove YouView from my television. I've no interest in YouView, and don't want to have anything to do with it.

Re: All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView

royabrown2 — Thu, 03 Oct 2019 14:22:41 GMT

@daveybuntu

Hoshsadiq is your friend here. Look him up on the internet.

But you will still have to have tuned in ITV and Channel 4 on terrestrial TV - might be OK just to have done this on the Freeview side, but if not it will have to be on the YouView side.

But once tuned, you don’t need to keep a terrestrial aerial connected, and you should be able to switch back to the Freeview side and employ Hoshsadiq OK.

And in fairness to Freesat, I have to repeat that the Now/Next satellite EPG, and the selection and numbering of the satellite channels on these Sony TVs, is not Freesat.

Re: All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView

Andy17784 — Fri, 21 May 2021 20:05:26 GMT

But how do I actually get ITV HUB ect my you view only displays Iplayer and my5 can’t seem to find any others anywhere ?

Re: All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView

Andy17784 — Fri, 21 May 2021 20:09:43 GMT

Did you ever get it sorted ? I can’t even find the option to download the app anywhere, we have a cheap TV in the bedroom and all the apps are just there ready to use but for some reason you view will only give me iplayer and my5

Re: All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView

royabrown2 — Mon, 24 May 2021 06:00:30 GMT

@Andy17784

There have been a few iterations of YouView since my last post above, and it’s different on the 2020 sets, and maybe those differences have been backported to some earlier sets; so I need to know the model number of your TV.

Prior to 2020, you needed to be on the ‘YouView’ side of these sets to get itv Hub and All4, and you needed that a terrestrial aerial had been plugged in and channels 3 and 4 tuned before they would work.

After which, if you came off the YouView side, you could still get those players with the Hoshsadiq exploit, but only that way.

And the All4 and itv Players were bundled in with YouView, and not separate in the Android TV store.

From 2020 sets onwards though, there hasn’t been the rigid enforcement of YouView versus Freeview, with quite a big switch required to go between them, just whether or not you go into ‘Live and Catch-up TV’, and get the YouView interface with all its advantages and disadvantages, or are outside it, and you get the Freeview interface.

And you should, with these later sets, be able to see the itv Hub and All 4 in the Android TV store, download them, and be able to watch them on the Freeview side, without having to have tuned terrestrial TV at all. (Though this has only recently become true of the itv Hub, as a bug, now fixed, was preventing the postcode acceptance now used instead of tuning the TV).

So which model of TV have you got, and have you still got the great YouView/Freeview divide, or the newer ‘Live and Catch-up TV’ approach?

And yes, the cheapest own-brand TV, from Tesco or the like, points up the absurdity of these Player restrictions on Sony TVs in this day and age.

Though we have a couple of 2020 LG TVs still devoid of All4 and My5, and probably some other Players. But we don’t sweat it; a £30 Roku Premiere attached bottom left under each TV with the supplied adhesive pad supplies all the players we could want, at the click of an HDMI port selection.

You could do the same on your Sony.

Re: All 4 5OD & ITV Player keep taking me to YouView

HannahEd01 — Tue, 01 Jun 2021 11:02:03 GMT

Hi Andy17784, what's the model number of the TV you have? Did they work before?