We met Sony at IFA and had a bunch of questions prepared regarding the promised Dolby Vision firmware, the latest version of Android TV, Google Assistant, and more. Here is what the company told us.

Dolby Vision
Sony announced its new 2017 range of TVs at CES in January and promised to enable Dolby Vision HDR on select models via a later firmware update. This is still the plan but owners will need a little more patience. The update is now scheduled for the “end of the year”.

Dolby Vision will be added to the Sony A1 OLED, X94E, X93E, and last year’s Z9D. The more affordable models will not receive the update but already supports HDR10 and HLG.

Sony will on the other hand not update its current X800 UHD Blu-ray player to support Dolby Vision, the company confirmed to us.



Android Oreo
We also asked Sony about its plans for Android 8.0 – or Android Oreo – that will introduce a revamped TV user interface. Sadly, Sony had nothing to announce at IFA.

- “We don’t have any information to share at this time,” Sony said in a statement.

This is not necessarily a bad sign. We received the same answer when we asked about version 6.0 and 7.0 in the past. Sony is the only manufacturer who has updated, or committed to update, all of its Android TV models from version 5.0 to 7.0. We hope that this will continue in the future.



Google Assistant
Google Assistant, the company’s voice assistant, is coming to Android TV. It will let viewers search for content across multiple services and ask general question relating to the weather, trivia, and more. Assistant is also coming to the Sony Android TVs but the company had no launch date to announce.

Philips said that it will add Google Assistant to its Android TVs ”this fall”. It sounded like Sony customers will need a little more patience.

Google Assistant will initially support English language only. More language options will be added with future updates.

Sony declined to comment on its future plans for more powerful processors in its Android TVs.