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Topic: Sony 4k authorized service required?
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Scott Norwood
Film God
![](http://www.film-tech.com/ubbmembers/30f.jpg)
Posts: 8146
From: Boston, MA. USA (1774.21 miles northeast of Dallas)
Registered: Jun 99
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posted 05-27-2010 12:58 PM
They can't legally stop the owner from doing anything, but that doesn't mean that they have to provide the information necessary to service the unit (e.g. passwords), either. They can also claim that altering the unit makes it ineligible for possible future software upgrades (thus possibly rendering it unusable now or in the future).
Car manufacturers do the same thing--google the Massachusetts "right to repair" legislation for some information on that industry and one attempt to change things. With many modern cars, only dealers have access to certain types of diagnostic information, essentially forcing customers to use dealers' service departments, rather than independent mechanics.
Personally, I find this attitude objectionable, and believe that manufacturers of any product should feel ethically obligated to provide (possibly for a resaonable fee) service documentation for their equipment. That said, this becomes more difficult for software-based products. Is Dolby obligated to provide users with the source code for the CP650? That is about as likely to happen as Microsoft providing users with the source code for Windows.
There is no doubt that we will see more issues like this in the future, both within and outside of the cinema industry.
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