Sony has issued a notice that YouTube will no longer work on some 2012-era smart TVs. But it’s not Sony’s fault, guys! It’s YouTube and the dastardly engineers who pushed the YouTube app past the TV’s performance capabilities thus proving once again it’s best to offload smart capabilities to set-top boxes.
The app will be removed from 2012 Bravia TVs on September 30th. Until then, users will notice a black screen or error messages when trying to load the YouTube app.
There’s an arms race in TV land. Manufacturers are loading their sets with more and more features in an effort to lure more customers to their sets. Yet many of these features are dependent on 3rd party developers to keep updated and often TVs are designed to last longer than it’s feasible to expect a developer to maintain an app.
At this point it’s hard to buy a TV without smart capabilities but it would behoove owners to use a set-top box such as an Amazon Fire TV or Apple TV to access Netflix, YouTube or other apps. When those become outdated — which they will — these devices much more affordable to replace than a whole TV.