Sony has set a date: November 17, 2026, after which network services stop working on 71 of its older audio and home entertainment products. The list runs to 16 AV receivers, 17 Blu-ray players, 16 Blu-ray home theater systems, nine soundbars, five wireless speakers, and a scattering of media players and micro systems.
Spotify, Netflix, and Google Cast are all gone, and from November 18 the icons disappear from the menus entirely. None of the hardware stops working, though, and a receiver that still drives your speakers properly is not going to suddenly break.
What Sony is actually switching off
The service list is longer in the US than it is elsewhere
According to the support notice, access to supported network services ends on the 17th, anything already downloaded stops being accessible, and the associated icons disappear the following day. In the US, the affected services are Amazon Prime Video, Google Cast, Netflix, Pandora, Slacker Radio, Spotify, and Vudu. The UK notice trims that to Spotify, Google Cast, Netflix, and Amazon services, and in some Asian markets it comes down to just Spotify and Google Cast.
Not every service runs on every model, so what you lose depends on what you own. A 2011 Blu-ray player like the BDP-S380 was never anybody’s Spotify endpoint, while an STR-DN1080 bought in 2017 may well have been doing both jobs at once. The wider shutdown, and what it means for casting as a whole, is a slightly different question. This one is about the gear already sitting in your cabinet.
Spotify Connect goes with it
Bose handled the same problem differently in the spring
The detail catching people out is what kind of Spotify support these devices had, as it was rarely an app you opened with the remote. It was Spotify Connect, the protocol that lets you pick the soundbar from inside the Spotify app on your phone and hand playback straight over to it. Our own review of the HT-ST5000 flagged exactly that back in 2017, alongside Chromecast built-in.
Sony’s notice lists Spotify without qualification, which means Connect goes with it. That is a deeper cut than the one Bose made to its SoundTouch speakers earlier this year, where the company retired its own streaming platform but left Spotify Connect and AirPlay alive on the hardware. If you have spent eight years using your phone as the remote for a soundbar, that habit is the thing you’re going to be trading in.
What still works after November 17
Anything you can plug a cable into
Sony is explicit that local playback and non-network features continue as normal, and that covers more ground than it sounds like. Every HDMI input, optical and coaxial in, analog RCA, USB, and the disc tray itself behave exactly as they did. The HAP-S1 and HAP-Z1ES keep the libraries on their internal drives, which, for a hard-disk player, is the point of owning one.
Bluetooth survives on the models that have it, which means the later receivers and soundbars rather than the 2010-2012 Blu-ray players. It’s a lossy fallback, and I would not build a system around it, but for putting a podcast on while you cook, it does the job.
Two things sit in a grey area. AirPlay is not named anywhere on Sony’s list, and neither is DLNA playback from a NAS nor a PC, both of which run device-to-device rather than through a Sony server. On the evidence, I would expect both to keep working, but I wouldn’t buy anything on the strength of that expectation, as Sony has not confirmed either way.
The fixes, the cheapest first
A streaming stick with a spare HDMI input does most of the work
If the device has a free HDMI input, and every AV receiver on the list does, this is a ten-minute job. Plug in a Roku Streaming Stick 4K or a Google TV Streamer, and Netflix, Prime Video, and casting all come back, while the Sony device carries on decoding and amplifying as it always did. The Roku sits at around $50 and the Google box lists at $99.99, so the whole repair costs less than a good HDMI cable did in 2015.
Soundbars are slightly fiddlier. Most of the affected models have HDMI inputs of their own, but if yours doesn’t, put the stick on the TV instead and send audio back down to HDMI ARC. Before you do, these are ARC rather than eARC, so lossless Atmos will not make the return trip, and you get the lossy Dolby Digital Plus version instead. On a 2016 soundbar, that is a smaller loss than it sounds.
For a music-first system, and particularly for HAP players and the micro systems, a WiiM Mini or WiiM Pro into the optical or line input is the tidier answer. It restores Spotify Connect and Google Cast audio, adds AirPlay 2 and TIDAL Connect on top, and hands the amplification back to the Sony gear. Reckon on roughly $90 for the Mini and around $150 for the Pro.
And if you own an STR-DN1050 or anything later, the cheapest fix available is the Bluetooth radio already inside it.
Sometimes replacing your kit is the honest answer
A 2010 home theater system is a different proposition than a 2017 receiver
Not everything on this list is worth propping up. A BDV-E370 is a 2010 Blu-ray home theater system with HDMI 1.4, no 4K, and no object-based audio, and bolting a $50 stick onto it buys you streaming apps attached to a system that was already several standards behind. If that’s what you are running, the shutdown may be a hint rather than a problem to overcome, and a current Sony bar like the HT-A3000 will be a bigger jump than any dongle.
The STR-DN1080 is a different case entirely. It handles Dolby Atmos and DTS:X, passes 4K HDR through cleanly, and drives seven channels without complaint. Nothing in the November change touches any of that. If it were mine, I would add a stick, ignore the missing icons, and expect another five years out of it.
Check your model number against Sony’s list before you do anything else, though. Half the devices on it are old enough that replacing them was already overdue, and the other half will comfortably outlive the apps that were bolted on. Working out which of those two piles your setup belongs in is the only decision November actually forces.
-
- Connectivity
-
Chromecast built-in, Apple Airplay 2, Spotify Connect, Bluetooth 5.0, Wi-Fi (ac)
- Ports
-
1x HDMI out (eARC), 2x HDMI inputs (8K60/HDR passthrough, not VRR/ALLM), 1x Ethernet, 1x optical, 1x 3.5mm
- Audio Format
-
Dolby Atmos, DTS:X, Sony Reality Audio
- Power
-
500W
- Speaker Arrangement
-
7.1.2ch
- Dimensions
-
1300 x 142 x 80mm
The Sony HT-A7000 delivers an unrivalled and fully immersive sound from a simple all-in-one soundbar.
