Sony failed to acknowledge a recent bug affecting Dolby Vision HDR and HDMI audio on its high-end Bravia TVs for several weeks, but after finally admitting that it did cause the problem through a firmware upgrade, it has started pushing out a fix almost immediately afterwards.
The issues first appeared in June when Sony released the firmware upgrades v114.602.050.1 and v114.602.080.1 for 2023 to 2026 Bravia TV models that are powered by MediaTek’s Pentonic 1000 chipset. The bugs were consequently documented on forums like AVSForum and elsewhere, affecting TVs such as the Sony A95L, Bravia 9, Bravia 9 II, Bravia 8, Bravia 8 II, Bravia 7, Bravia 7 II and the Bravia 5.
The bug appears to have caused fundamental problems with eARC, resulting in some users not being able to play Dolby Vision content on their TVs at all, sound that gradually desyncs from the content viewed on screen, getting worse the longer you watch, and complete audio dropouts. Interestingly, many users reported being affected by some of the problems and not others. However, according to WhatHiFi, the common factor in all of these issues is that they only occurred when playing content from an external media source, such as the Apple TV 4K.
Sony did not comment on the problems through its official support website or its social media platforms, but in August it suddenly pushed out firmware v114.602.170.1, which appears to have solved the Dolby Vision black screen issues which occurred when using an external HDMI content source. Many users have confirmed that Dolby Vision is no longer problematic, but some said they’re now seeing a separate flickering scan-line issue when watching content in the HDR format.
Last week, Sony finally commented publicly about the problems, issuing a statement on its Japanese support website that confirmed the issues were caused by faulty firmware and promised a fix is on the way.
Now this week, the company has begun rolling out firmware version v114.603.100.1 to U.S. Sony TV owners, who report that the issues affecting HDMI audio going out of sync have now disappeared. Unfortunately, it seems that the new firmware hasn’t yet fixed the problem with HDMI eARC audio dropouts, or the newer flickering scan issue with Dolby Vision, so we imagine Sony is working on separate resolutions for those.
U.K. and European Sony TV owners will have to wait a while longer until they receive their HDMI audio fix, for the new firmware has not yet been made available in those regions. But it should arrive soon.
