I have a customer that forwarded an email from Amazon to me.

The email clearly states that Amazon will no longer continue the Prime Video app on any Sony products other than the smart TVs (because of Android TV I'm guessing), effective September 26th 2019.

The email header looks legit to be from Amazon and he got the email because of his Sony BDP-S5100 Bluray he uses (says so in his email to him).
The email was also offering him a $25 amazon gift code towards the purchase of any FireTV device on Amazon, for the inconvenience.

1st - WTF!!!
2nd - I have no other customer that has received this email (I have many with Sony bluray's streaming Prime). And even myself, I have a couple of Sony Bluray players in the house with Prime setup and I have received no such emails; one of them is an older S5200.

I'm just trying to understand if this is legit or some kind of scam the customer has gotten. It seems legit except for the fact I have not seen ANY announcements about this from anywhere; including Sony themselves. And no one else seems to have received an email like this I can find.

Have them hover the cursor over the name of the sender in their inbox- it should show the IP address of the sender and if it's not a real Amazon address, it's spam or phishing. I get e-mails with real company names constantly and when I hover the cursor, it's almost never from the company involved.

I recently got an email from Hulu stating after Aug 14 the Hulu app on my sony bluray player would no longer work. No compensation offered. :(

If you highlight hulu app on the sony it states its leaving on the 8/14, but nothing for amazon app.

If it is legit, going to be interesting going forward.
We have had to deal with Spotify and how it does and doesn't work well with some systems.
Works with Nest has stopped, now that Google owns it they want to have control.
Sonos stopped "on this phone or device" because of reliability issues with the latest OS
Next it could be which device or TV or streaming box allows you to watch which services

In the end, our clients will give us heck because of stupid crap that is out of our control.
Time to add to a disclaimer for every project.

I always stress (multiple times) that these streaming Apps are very fragile and subject to being withdrawn at any time.

I think this is just the start, as the media sources are now seeing the numbers that all the free accounts are costing them.

Sooner or later, there will be something coming own the line that will disable any device that the media source suppliers cannot trace.

Remember all those hacked DirecTV receivers?

Unfortunately, it seems to be following in the footsteps of our political parties. If you are against us, you can not be for us. You will have to own a Sony TV to see this and a Samsung to see this................freaking crazy, can't everybody just get along?

The email the customer received was from Amazon.
At the least, I think someone at Amazon screwed up the email. I think they meant that an update to the Prime app in September, will make it so his old Sony bluray will no longer be able to support it. This would make since, seeing how the S5100 is 6 years old. So perfectly normal.

However, I have a hard time believing they would break it for a player that just came out last year. But who knows. It is hard to know who to blame as well in a BS situation like that - is Amazon doing something to keep manufactures from updating the app on current products? Or is the manufacture to lazy to do it?

The only thing that gives this weight for me, is what was edmund mentioned about the Hulu app. That announcement has actually been on Sony's support website for awhile. They list all the model numbers of the affected bluray players and it includes models like the S#700 series (current bluray models). What is curious is the non-listing of any of the UHD players from Sony (X700, X800, etc.).
I'm waiting to see what happens in August with the Hulu app, because it is equally BS if the Hulu app gets 'pulled' from all Sony bluray players - that would not be do to a technical reason but by an industry political one.

It's not just streaming video services. Recently, Yamaha had to deal with an Internet Radio service issue.

For starters, this is one reason we recommend against using Blu-ray players as streaming devices. Roku or Apple TV. The newest AndroidTV OS on the Sony TVs is good as well.

And yes, a 6 year old "tech" device is very much obsolete. No matter what it is, who made it, how much it cost, etc. Luckily for us, we are in the business of selling new tech devices. :)

I only offer Roku's and if the client really insists then I'll install a ATV.

Roku is neutral in the streaming wars. NEVER rely on built in streaming on any device.

I agree with this to a point. With everyone and their mother coming out with streaming services, there is going to be a war with who supports what. What is going to happen to Prime, Netflix, etc. when Apple releases their streaming service? Is Apple going to stop supporting these, why wouldn't they?

Soon we are going to require a player per service because nobody wants to get along with each other and they want all the money for themselves.


Exactly, but who's to say that Roku doesn't want to create their own service or be bought out by a company (Disney?) that will then limit what services are available.

I don't see Roku getting bought out by anyone anytime soon. Mostly because I don't see Disney wanting to get into the hardware business.

But you know Roku does have it's own app on the platform now. They are slowly growing it and looking a lot like what the new Apple+ app is going to be. Only they have it right now and it's only available on Roku.

Blu-ray lol. What about VHS? I haven't purchased or rented a disc (or cassette) in ten years.

Time to upgrade the client to a Roku.

I stopped using Blu-ray players to stream several years ago when i got tired of having to reboot the player weekly because the processors and memory were under built to handle the data. If someone wants to stream, they get a dedicated streaming device. An ATV unless they downright insist on Roku. We’ve found the ATVs to be more reliable now, especially since you can reboot them with an IR code.