Big Changes Are Coming To Sony TVs (And You're Going To Hate Them)

All good things must come to an end. But do they have to? Last month, Sony announced it would sell its Bravia 3 II TVs at budget prices. You used to get a ton of features for reasonable prices, but you know what they say: Sony giveth, Sony taketh away. Recently Sony announced that starting late May 2026, certain models of Bravia TV will lose access to several display and TV Guide (Program Guide) features. These will include the 2023 A95L series, the 2024 Bravia 9 (XR90), Bravia 8 (XR80), and Bravia 7 (XR70) models, and the 2025 Bravia 8 II (XR80M2) and Bravia 5 (XR50) models.

The available features will vary depending on whether you use a Set Top Box (STB) or Antenna TV (ATSC). STB users will lose the Set Top Box menu but will get a control menu instead, and thumbnails for shows are being removed. ATSC users, meanwhile, will lose even more, as they will no longer see program information, channel logos, program description thumbnails, and the programs of all but the most recently watched channels.

Sony's TVs are regarded as some of the most reliable TVs on the market. However, this seemingly customer-unfriendly move might undermine some of that trust, especially since it allegedly comes from a place of cost-cutting. While Sony did not explain why it was removing the aforementioned features, outlets such as Cord Cutters News speculate that the company's bean counters view this as a necessary sacrifice of sorts. As the outlet points out, Sony utilizes numerous "backend services and data feeds" that power the guide features of its Bravia TVs.

The school of thought is that in order to maintain these services, Sony execs feel they have to sacrifice and scale back other services. There's only so much money in the pot. In the spirit of fairness, while it's always painful to see features leave, Bravias don't really need cable boxes or TV antennas. You can watch shows using any of the best streaming services, numerous apps to stream free movies and TV shows, and live TV streaming platforms. But for everyone who likes to watch local-access television on their Bravias, you have our sympathies.