Google Solid is being downsized

When you personal a Sony soundbar, an AV receiver, or one of many firm’s older Blu-ray gamers, I am unhappy to say that the Google Solid button you have all the time reached for is on borrowed time. From November 17, 2026, Sony is pulling a batch of community providers from greater than 70 legacy audio and video units, and two of the casualties are those folks really use day-to-day: Spotify and casting.

The gear retains working as an amplifier or a disc spinner, although the comfort to procure it for disappears. Which raises the plain query — what replaces it? The title everyone seems to be pointing to is Matter Casting, the open-standard successor that’s been billed because the repair for years now.

What Sony is switching off, and when

The listing is lengthy, even when the {hardware} is outdated

Sony’s personal assist discover is fairly blunt about it, saying entry to the affected providers ends on November 17, and from the subsequent day the icons vanish from the interface as in the event that they had been by no means there. Something you’d already downloaded could even cease opening. Spotify and Google Solid are constants throughout areas; within the US, Pandora, Slacker Radio, and Vudu are additionally on the listing.

The complete rundown places the size in perspective: roughly 9 soundbars, 16 AV receivers, 17 Blu-ray gamers, and a scattering of residence theater programs and wi-fi audio system. Most are outdated, because the units on these lists are usually, however that’s chilly consolation in the event you’ve acquired the STR-DN1080 nonetheless doing completely strong work in your lounge.

This retains occurring, and it’s probably not about Google

The protocol is ok; it is the licensed service that dies

None of that is distinctive to Sony, and it’s value being clear about what’s really ending. Bose did a lot the identical to its SoundTouch audio system earlier this yr, and Google discontinued the standalone Chromecast in 2024, folding it into the pricier Google TV Streamer. Google Solid, the protocol, although, isn’t going wherever, because it’s nonetheless constructed into present Google TV units and loads of TVs on sale at the moment, together with Sony’s personal Bravia units.

What’s ending on these older Sony packing containers is a licensed service that leans on servers Sony not desires to maintain operating. Put one other approach, the casting you get by another person’s cloud lasts precisely so long as that individual is prepared to pay for it.

The place Matter Casting is available in

It fingers off to the app already sitting in your TV

Matter Casting is the reply the business retains trying in the direction of, and on paper it’s a superb one. It’s a part of the Matter smart-home customary overseen by the Connectivity Requirements Alliance, which implies it’s royalty-free, open to any producer, and doesn’t require new {hardware} — the app in your telephone and the app in your TV simply must assist it.

The structure is the most effective bit, as fairly than mirroring your display or operating a parallel stream, it fingers off to the native app already on the TV, so you retain full playback controls, 4K HDR, encompass sound, and subtitles as an alternative of no matter a shaky peer-to-peer hyperlink can handle. Amazon, which has been driving the usual since CES 2024, likes to level out that you would be able to even preserve Prime Video’s X-Ray overlay whereas casting. It’s, in different phrases, the model of casting you may design in the event you had been beginning over.

So is it prepared? Not likely, not but

Two years in, it is nonetheless very practically an Amazon-only function

Two years after launch, Matter Casting continues to be, for essentially the most half, Amazon’s get together. On the telephone aspect, Prime Video and STARZ assist it; Plex, Pluto TV, Sling TV, and ZDF had been all introduced again in January 2024 and nonetheless haven’t shipped it. On the receiving finish, you’re trying on the Echo Present 15, newer Fireplace TV units, Panasonic units with Fireplace TV in-built, and a bit TCL assist. The 2 casting requirements most individuals really use each day — Google Solid and Apple’s AirPlay — come from firms displaying no signal of adopting it.

An open customary that just one large participant has embraced doesn’t actually clear up fragmentation; it simply provides one other emblem to the pile. When you’re one of many folks this Sony information really impacts, Matter Casting does nothing for you, and your 2018 soundbar is not receiving a firmware replace to affix the Matter cloth.

What to do in case your Sony system is on the listing

The amplifier nonetheless amplifies, it simply wants a brand new mind

In case your system is on the listing (and it’s value checking Sony’s mannequin listing earlier than you assume), the excellent news is that nothing bodily stops working. The amplifier nonetheless amplifies, and something coming in by way of HDMI ARC, optical, RCA, Bluetooth, or native storage continues precisely as earlier than. What you lose is the built-in smarts, and fortunately, that’s a budget half to interchange. If it had been my setup, I’d add a small exterior streamer and let the Sony gear do what it’s genuinely good at — driving the audio system.

A Google TV Streamer or a Fireplace TV Stick restores casting and Spotify to a soundbar or AVR for effectively underneath $50, and for a music-first system, a WiiM streamer does the identical job for audio. Your decade-old receiver turns into an excellent amplifier with another person’s mind bolted on, which is kind of what a receiver has all the time been.

Matter Casting may but develop into the factor that fixes casting for good. The structure deserves to win, and the fragmentation it’s meant to resolve is actual and worsening. For now, although, it’s a promising customary ready for the remainder of the business to show up, whereas the precise repair for a switched-off Sony field is a $40 stick and a spare HDMI port. Till the long run arrives, it will must do.

Model

Amazon

Working System

Fireplace OS

Downloadable Apps

1000’s

Decision

4K, Dolby Imaginative and prescient, HDR10

Ports

HDMI