Freeview failure hits Sony recorder owners

Sony says it is experiencing "a major technical issue" after many owners of its DVD recorders lost access to their Freeview TV channels. Dozens of owners have written to the BBC to complain that a malfunctioning software update on Friday has caused their devices to stop receiving or recording Freeview. Many complained about a lack of response from Sony customer support. Sony said it was doing everything possible to solve the problem. "A major technical issue has been flagged to our dedicated team. We will update you asap," the Japanese firm tweeted back on Saturday in response to dozens of messages about the problem. The company's own support forums as well as other independent online sites were filled with complaints from irate users over the weekend. Sony HXD recorders, such as the RDR-HXD870 model, which were updated Friday with the firmware 1.70 fix, seem to be affected by the issue. "It may already have come to your attention that thousands of owners of Sony DVD units have completely lost all their access to Freeview channels," Geoff Cheers, from Chorley, wrote to the BBC. Graham Johnson, from Oxford, wrote: "There are thousands of people affected by this, many of whom, like me, have wasted hours today trying to retune and repair their machine. Many folks, it seems, have also been out and bought a new one. "Sony's Twitter feed and own technical support website are in meltdown with angry customers, and Sony themselves are conspicuous by their absence." On Sunday, a spokeswoman for Sony UK told the BBC: "We are aware of the issue and our engineers are doing everything to solve it."