Philips customers who will lose their smart TV functionality by the end of this year will be compensated with a free Amazon Fire TV Stick. Previously the company's customer service stated affected users wouldn't receive any compensation because the reason was beyond control of Philips.
A spokesman of TP Vision, the company that manufacturers the TVs under a Philips license, today told the Dutch website NU.nl that it will offer compensation to affected users after it received a lot of negative media attention. So far mainly Dutch users appear to be affected and therefore the choice for a Amazon Fire TV Stick is interesting at least. The device is normally not available in Netherlands and also Amazon's video service is officially not available in the country.
The owners of Philips TVs in the 8000 and 9000 series that were sold in 2009 will lose their smart TV functionality because the TV doesn't support SHA-2 encryption. The TVs only supports outdated SHA-1 certificates that later this year will no longer be supported by Netflix, Youtube and possibly other online services.
According to Phillips it's not possible to upgrade the TVs to use the new security certificates, therefore the TVs will no longer be able to connect to websites that require SHA-2 certificates.
It's not the first time Philips branded device lose smart functionality. Earlier this year also blu-ray players, media players and home theatre systems manufactured by Gibson and sold under the Philips brand lost their smart capabilities.
