topic Re: Voice Control in Android TV

Voice Control

Funkyred47 — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 08:57:34 GMT

Hi everyone, new to this forum.

last week I purchased a KD43-XE8005, set it up and was impressed with the 'voice control' function. I was prompted to update the firmware, which I did, and now when I try to use voice control, the TV just goes to YouTube.

Anyone tell me how to rollback the firmware?

How do I contact Sony support by phone?

Thanks in advance.

Geoff

Re: Voice Control

Jecht_Sin — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 09:26:10 GMT

Do you mean that when you push the mic button it opens YouTube instead of Google Assistant? That would be odd.

Anyway, you (we) can't roll back the Android version. What you may try to do is to unpair your tv remote in the Bluetooth setting and pair it again. If it still doesn't work I don't have better ideas than to reset the tv to factory settings. That should fix it for sure. It's a bit of a pain, but after upgrading it's probably highly suggested anyway, given the poor state of this OS. I tried not to reset to factory settings myself after the Android 7.0 upgrade, and after a day I was just forced to. My tv was going nut.

Re: Voice Control

MiCal1967 — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 09:26:29 GMT

Hi @Funkyred47

Did you try a Reboot

http://sony-eur-eu-en-web--eur.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/72691/kw/

or a Factory reset after the firmware Update?

http://sony-eur-eu-en-web--eur.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/66442/kw/android%20reboot/related/1

Factory reset will lose all your Settings, apps, channel and must setup again.

Re: Voice Control

Funkyred47 — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 10:24:35 GMT

Looking at it, my post was rather ambiguous! I meant after pressing the mic button and asking the unit to change to a specific channel, it just goes to YouTube for that channel.

I had thought of a 'Factory Reset', but was hoping there may have been an alternative.

Thanks for the reply.

Re: Voice Control

Funkyred47 — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 10:25:59 GMT

Thanks for the reply, looks like that's the way I'll have to go.

Re: Voice Control

Kuschelmonschter — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 10:43:08 GMT

A factory reset won't fix that.

Did you prepend "Switch to"? E.g. "Switch to BBC1". Also in German speaking country, voice control is not able to properly resolve many channel names, see here.

Voice control in Sony is just not up to today's standards...

Re: Voice Control

Jecht_Sin — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 11:41:29 GMT

Kuschelmonschter wrote:

Voice control in Sony is just not up to today's standards...

It wouldn't be Sony fault for once. As far as I know the voice recognition is Google's software. Then I don't understand, it usually recognises what I say in Italian in both the tv and the telephone. And, with my surprise, even in English (I mean, with my heavy accent it's odd)! Just tested it few times now. I can dictate a whole sentence and it recognises it all. Well, maybe with few wrong guesses (like "love" became "like).

@Funkyred47 Anyway, your tv is fine. As discussed above it's a matter of voice recognition, you're probably giving the wrong commands.

Re: Voice Control

Funkyred47 — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 11:55:12 GMT

Before the firmware update, saying "go to??" the TV changed to the required channel. I've tried all kinds of verbal commands without success, all that happens is the TV displays YouTube.

I've just spent an hour on the phone to Sony support who are going to investigate and get back to me tomorrow, hopefully!

Thanks for for all your replies.

Re: Voice Control

Jecht_Sin — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 12:24:20 GMT

Then probably it's a matter of clearing the app's data for the speech recognition. The only problem is that I don't know which one is the app. Unless it is "Text To Speech" but that app should be used only to read the text (and not vice-versa. I think). But Sony should know much better.

Please let us know if and in case how you fix it.

Re: Voice Control

Kuschelmonschter — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 13:14:30 GMT

Jecht_Sin schrieb:
It wouldn't be Sony fault for once.

I am not entirely sure who is responsible for mapping the spoken word to the channels in Sony's DTV integration. But I assume that the DTV software provides a database of TV channels and Google is responsible for the mapping.

It basically works for me too, but only for the "easy" channels. As soon as channel names get more complex with special characters inside (like in Austria/Germany "Sat.1" or "ORF SPORT+), the TV won't resolve it and instead pull some YouTube results.

One thing you have to consider is that you have to set the system language to the appropriate language rather than the speech language. I suggest to set both to your desired language inside the Settings menu which is English I suppose?

Probably you also have to enable the DTV part in the voice search section of the Settings?

Re: Voice Control

Jecht_Sin — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 13:55:40 GMT

I believe it should work like this:

Voice command -> Conversion to text -> Match query -> Execute correspondent action

Sony should build the DB for the channels to be matched in the query. But Google (Android) does the voice to text conversion and then it should be the one to execute the action. If misunderstood then the executer (Android) decides to open youtube instead (why YouTube doesn;t make much sense to me).

The converter instead should have acces to, among other things, the tv channel list (built by Sony) and privilege them when building the query. At least that's how I would do it, I mean, it seems quite logical.

Regarding the tv understanding the English language I am even more suprised, since my tv is set in Italian. But I did set the tv in English for few hours, so it may have kept track of it. For example once to test an issue with the keyboard in an Xperia Theme I had to set the phone in Japanese. Switching back to Italian now the option to use the Japanese keyboard is always there. But honestly i don't know at all how that works.

PS: I can't test the channel switching because I don't have an aerial. But I do realise that some queries/channels can be quite hard to match

Re: Voice Control

Kuschelmonschter — Thu, 13 Jul 2017 16:00:15 GMT

Jecht_Sin schrieb:
decides to open youtube instead (why YouTube doesn;t make much sense to me).

It doesn't actually open YouTube. It just shows YouTube results as typical cards. Just like if you voice search something. It can't map the channel name, so it does as search as fallback...

Re: Voice Control

Funkyred47 — Wed, 19 Jul 2017 07:00:17 GMT

Update:.

I contacted Sony support Thursday morning, the Operator couldn't help me, but promised to look into it an ring me back Friday morning, he didn't!

I again contacted Sony, asked why they hadn't called back, apologies from them, but the Operator I spoke to had had an accident! They couldn't suggest either a reason or cure, but it would be elevated for further investigation.

Anyway, Tuesday evening, it's still being investigated.

watch this space.

Re: Voice Control

kalocin — Sun, 09 Sep 2018 13:22:45 GMT

Hi @Funkyred47 / all - if you're still around, were you able to resolve the issue with not being able to change channels via the voice remote? Just bought a SONY BRAVIA KD43XF8796BU and having the exact same problem with the TV offering to play (for example) BBC1 from YouTube when you say "switch to Channel 1", so would be grateful for any information that might resolve this. Thank you