Sony sadly has a long history of limiting devices in crazy ways. Their beautiful ebook reader was a disaster from a software perspective.
Paradoxically, since they are a conglomerate some divisions have sane policies. Their mobile phone one is among the few manufacturers that release kernels and make it easy to self-compile your own AOSP.
Really wishing I would have realized that before buying my Sony Bravia TV a few years ago. It's basically just an output device for my Roku, I don't want/need any of the built-in smart TV junk but a recent update now causes it to reboot just about every time I turn it on.
The reboot process takes almost a full minute, but at least the SONY logo emblazoned on the screen during that time has hopefully given me a Pavlovian aversion to their brand so that I won't make the same mistake again.
I remember buying mine, then them saying they would'nt support apps on it anymore, then a month later the netflix app stopped working, was great timing i ended up getting a pirate box instead. Never again sony, never again.
Paradoxically, since they are a conglomerate some divisions have sane policies. Their mobile phone one is among the few manufacturers that release kernels and make it easy to self-compile your own AOSP.