End of an era. I am probably from the last generation (late millennial/early zoomer threshold) where the name Sony was synonymous with getting the best thing money can buy, and that's gone now:...
End of an era. I am probably from the last generation (late millennial/early zoomer threshold) where the name Sony was synonymous with getting the best thing money can buy, and that's gone now: VAIO's its own (terrible) brand now, Bravia TVs are gone, the Xperia smartphones are on their last legs… PlayStation's fine at least so there's that.
It’s really too bad that the minidisc format didn’t continue to evolve or at least get a spiritual successor. They fill a niche that nothing based on flash memory can as a result of being more...
It’s really too bad that the minidisc format didn’t continue to evolve or at least get a spiritual successor. They fill a niche that nothing based on flash memory can as a result of being more tolerant of abuse and long-lasting — I can buy MDs recorded 20 years ago that have been floating around without a case the whole time that still sound perfect where an SD or CF card would’ve bitrot and a CD/DVD-R would’ve physically degraded and/or gotten all scratched up.
Yeah, too bad. I was a big fan while it lasted. I thought the players themselves were really cool-looking too, and compared to CD players or walkmans, they were far more portable and fir in a...
Yeah, too bad. I was a big fan while it lasted. I thought the players themselves were really cool-looking too, and compared to CD players or walkmans, they were far more portable and fir in a pocket more easily. The limited space on each disc also made me more thoughtful about what I listened to. Now you just have open access to millions of songs, and some days I want none of it. Times sure change!
Good god, I miss MiniDisc. It was the perfect music format. All the tactile feedback of physical media, just right size for portability, capacity that was neither too little to feel limiting or...
Good god, I miss MiniDisc. It was the perfect music format.
All the tactile feedback of physical media, just right size for portability, capacity that was neither too little to feel limiting or too much so that decision paralysis kicks in with a limitless music supply, mix "tapes" still a thing, form factor that protected the media and looked good doing it, creative playback devices. It makes sense, often the end of a technology line sees a perfection of it.
To be fair, Sony had long stopped manufacturing the actual displays in their TVs. AFAIK, Sony has been buying the majority, if not all, of their displays from LG, which is something of a losing...
To be fair, Sony had long stopped manufacturing the actual displays in their TVs. AFAIK, Sony has been buying the majority, if not all, of their displays from LG, which is something of a losing proposition when LG itself is one of the world's largest manufacturer of finished consumer televisions sets.
The point of buying a Sony TV over the others, though, was the far better design of their accessory components. Sony had one of the best upscalers, for instance, so your old media would look just a bit better on theirs than their competition with the same exact panel. Sony also never really stopped making a minimum baseline of quality for their remote controls, with all of the ones I've seen actually having all the buttons you'd expect of a TV remote. Their software was also better and they tend to behave better as a system than most manufactuers do: my Sony TV is the only one I've ever owned that actually handles CEC correctly.
TCL seems to be a fairly decent company as far as I'm aware, but my only experience with them was their very low end which I purchased for my dying grandmother. Who knows how much of the Sony "sauce" will survive?
I believe the top end Bravia's currently use QD-OLED panels, which are manufactured by Samsung. So like most companies manufacturing displays, they use both Samsung and LG panels. Not sure if they...
I believe the top end Bravia's currently use QD-OLED panels, which are manufactured by Samsung. So like most companies manufacturing displays, they use both Samsung and LG panels. Not sure if they use panels from BOE (Chinese company), which is the other big display panel player (which the two big Korean companies have been wrestling with, including IP lawsuits).
I agree; as further evidence the iPhone got its start using Samsung SoCs and panels with Apple's secret sauce and became a massive success. Sony had the opportunity to do something similar but it...
The point of buying a Sony TV over the others, though, was the far better design of their accessory components. Sony had one of the best upscalers, for instance, so your old media would look just a bit better on theirs than their competition with the same exact panel.
I agree; as further evidence the iPhone got its start using Samsung SoCs and panels with Apple's secret sauce and became a massive success. Sony had the opportunity to do something similar but it seems TVs have become hopelessly commoditized in the eyes of the average customer, making the R&D investment into making the best upscalers and TV software worthless. It's sad.
I'm a mid-millennial and yes, i grew up with the idea that 'Sony made the best gadgets', which they really did. The biggest loss for me is Xperia phones being scaled back and sold in fewer...
I'm a mid-millennial and yes, i grew up with the idea that 'Sony made the best gadgets', which they really did.
The biggest loss for me is Xperia phones being scaled back and sold in fewer geographies. They were (still are) great high-end smartphones (and they still come with headphone jacks!), but you can't buy them in many places now. Here in Australia you have to risk a shady seller on Amazon or Ebay if you want one. Which is a shame. They are not more expensive than the top end Samsung Galaxies, and i would happily trade my S23 Ultra for the newest Sony Xperia if i could buy it from a reliable source.
It truly is sad to see how the modern Sony Xperia brand is a shell of its former self. I don't believe they were ever truly popular but they do have a lot of enthusiast features everyone else gave...
It truly is sad to see how the modern Sony Xperia brand is a shell of its former self. I don't believe they were ever truly popular but they do have a lot of enthusiast features everyone else gave up long ago. The recently launched Xperia 1 VII is a really cool phone too. They've ditched their super narrow design for a more conventional aspect ratio but it's still a great phone with great hardware. Given that you are in Australia, you might be able to import one from Japan. I know of a few sites that import phones from Europe and China for the US so I assume there's gotta be one that'll be willing to ship to Australia too. Though I'm not sure if you'll run into any issues with telecoms blocking the phone for being imported.
Yea i can import an unlocked phone for sure, but the trick is to find a reputable importer/seller. Also, when you buy locally (i mean either physically in-store or directly from a local seller...
Yea i can import an unlocked phone for sure, but the trick is to find a reputable importer/seller. Also, when you buy locally (i mean either physically in-store or directly from a local seller online), it is possible to trade in your current phone and thereby save a lot of money, which will probably not be possible if you import something. Then you're stuck selling your current phone by yourself. I'll probably be willing to try all this in a couple of years when my current phone gets even older.
Ayaneo is supposed to be making a spiritual successor phone to the Xperia called the Pocket Play. It's in preproduction right now, and they're hitting delays and are a little on the outs with...
Ayaneo is supposed to be making a spiritual successor phone to the Xperia called the Pocket Play. It's in preproduction right now, and they're hitting delays and are a little on the outs with their community right now over redistributors being prioritized over their crowdfunding backers, but if that clears up, it could be something to keep an eye on.
That's a spiritual successor the Xperia Play specifically - the Xperia phones were a line of otherwise normal phones. Just with the really good Sony camera app and headphone jacks. But yeah the...
That's a spiritual successor the Xperia Play specifically - the Xperia phones were a line of otherwise normal phones. Just with the really good Sony camera app and headphone jacks.
But yeah the whole Ayaneo thing stinks. Their business model is like designing a limited-run handheld twice a year or something, crowdfunding it, then having the next crowdfunded project be up before they've shipped the current one. I don't know how a tiny company can reasonably do that with good QC.
Yes I remember when Sony made the best devices. I have some old cassette tapes that I wanted to play so I looked around and there are very players few made now. There are some cheap ones made in...
Yes I remember when Sony made the best devices.
I have some old cassette tapes that I wanted to play so I looked around and there are very players few made now. There are some cheap ones made in China and all the ones I tried are poorly designed and unreliable. I found out that Sony Walkman players that are over 30 years old are often still good after some maintenance of specific parts. There are repair kits for the common problems including capacitors, gears, and belts. Used players can sell for hundreds of dollars.
I miss the variety and quality of mechanical things from the not-too distant past.
Terrible news. Sony TVs are for now some of the lowest-BS options on the market and come with a minimally modified build of Android TV that can easily have the creepy content matching stuff...
Terrible news. Sony TVs are for now some of the lowest-BS options on the market and come with a minimally modified build of Android TV that can easily have the creepy content matching stuff removed and are generally amicable to entirely offline use. I would expect rebadged-TCL-Sony models to be significantly more junked up and to use less capable compute.
Will have to see how finances work out but it might be time to move up the TV upgrade schedule.
I don't see why that would necessarily be the case. TCL famously (or infamously) doesn't do any TV software - they just outsource it to Roku, and the angst with TCL TV software is mostly that Roku...
I would expect rebadged-TCL-Sony models to be significantly more junked up and to use less capable compute.
I don't see why that would necessarily be the case. TCL famously (or infamously) doesn't do any TV software - they just outsource it to Roku, and the angst with TCL TV software is mostly that Roku sucks.
Now that they presumably have acquired Sony's software, I don't see why they wouldn't just continue using it. Can't imagine it's more expensive than paying Roku licensing when you already spent a bunch of money acquiring it. It's not like TCL particularly wants to evangelize the software of a different (and American!) company if they don't have to.
We’ll see. If Sony is willing to keep paying their TV software team, it’s possible that TCL will continue to use the Sony software, but otherwise it’s simpler from a supply chain, operational, and...
We’ll see. If Sony is willing to keep paying their TV software team, it’s possible that TCL will continue to use the Sony software, but otherwise it’s simpler from a supply chain, operational, and support standpoint to shift “Sony” TVs to the standard TCL stack except for Sony’s special sauce image processing chip.
TCL also likely gets a kickback from Roku on spyware/analytics revenue which could shift the balance in that direction too.
Minor nitpick, but TCL also sells Fire TV and Google TV based models, as well as the Roku ones. Costco has carried both the Fire/Google TV ones in my area for a while now. I've only ever seen the...
Minor nitpick, but TCL also sells Fire TV and Google TV based models, as well as the Roku ones. Costco has carried both the Fire/Google TV ones in my area for a while now.
I've only ever seen the Roku TCL models at Walmart, now that I think of it.
Does it? My memory is that for its faults, Amazon and Google TV software were much worse. I have a TCL TV with Roku and used Roku sticks to help my mother cut the cable TV cord, and my assessment...
the angst with TCL TV software is mostly that Roku sucks
Does it? My memory is that for its faults, Amazon and Google TV software were much worse. I have a TCL TV with Roku and used Roku sticks to help my mother cut the cable TV cord, and my assessment is that they're Fine.
The ads stink as all ads do, but I like how on the default settings they prioritize showing inputs and the apps you have installed by default, instead of showing you the contents of Amazon/YouTube TV. It makes sense, given they make deals with these streaming companies instead of having a streaming service of their own to upsell you on.
I have actually experienced a sharp decline in performance over the years in the two Bravia TVs that my family owns. Both in terms of compute power of the hardware and the software getting worse...
I have actually experienced a sharp decline in performance over the years in the two Bravia TVs that my family owns. Both in terms of compute power of the hardware and the software getting worse and more bloated. Granted our TVs are several years old now, but you would naturally want such expensive electronics to endure for 6-7 years.
If this joint venture can improve the hardware power and the software, that would be great. But i would not expect it, given that all consumer electronics, no matter who manufactures them, are being designed with short lifespans and planned obsolescence in order to sell us the next shiny product.
In fact, if they make Bravias cheaper, i would definitely expect the quality and experience to get worse, so i agree with you on that.
Have you tried factory resetting the TVs? I’m using an upper-midrange Bravia from 2018 and it performs better now than it did brand new thanks to a firmware update. I’ve kept it offline the whole...
Have you tried factory resetting the TVs?
I’m using an upper-midrange Bravia from 2018 and it performs better now than it did brand new thanks to a firmware update. I’ve kept it offline the whole time and outsourced “smarts” to an Apple TV 4K, though (firmware updated with a USB thumb drive).
If the Apple TV box is doing the computing for you and you're just using the TV as a display i suppose you dont have to deal with the TV's OS, no matter how slow it is. That's another thing....it...
If the Apple TV box is doing the computing for you and you're just using the TV as a display i suppose you dont have to deal with the TV's OS, no matter how slow it is.
That's another thing....it is almost impossible now to find a high-end TV now that is non-smart, just a good display panel, to which you can attach a mini PC or a more powerful Android box.
I mean, the behavior on pretty much every smart TV I’ve ever used is that if you select an HDMI input, and don’t change it, the UI won’t even come up. Or maybe there’ll be a brief splash screen on...
I mean, the behavior on pretty much every smart TV I’ve ever used is that if you select an HDMI input, and don’t change it, the UI won’t even come up. Or maybe there’ll be a brief splash screen on startup.
Either way, if you just want to have another box do all the TV-ing I’m pretty sure almost every TV out there will do that just fine.
I've experienced something similar actually with my parent's Bravia. Granted it is a 2015 model but some update around the time of the pandemic really brought the Android UI to a crawl. Nowadays...
I've experienced something similar actually with my parent's Bravia. Granted it is a 2015 model but some update around the time of the pandemic really brought the Android UI to a crawl. Nowadays my parents use an Apple TV so it's not too big a deal for them but I really do wonder what happened.
There was a major Android TV update a few years ago that basically made the whole thing more expensive to run once they added a giant ad banner at the top half of the home screen that also played...
There was a major Android TV update a few years ago that basically made the whole thing more expensive to run once they added a giant ad banner at the top half of the home screen that also played video, and live updated the tiles there for whatever has paid for promotion.
And with that, the last of the Japanese TV manufacturers ends. That being said, I imagine the TCL x Bravia TVs would probably do just fine - the high end TCL TVs perform as well as any other...
And with that, the last of the Japanese TV manufacturers ends. That being said, I imagine the TCL x Bravia TVs would probably do just fine - the high end TCL TVs perform as well as any other manufacturer's. But it does mean that none of the manufacturers are domestically owned in Japan anymore.
Somewhat remarkable the way Korean companies leapfrogged the Japanese tech giants over the last few decades. Chinese companies as well, of course, but Korea has a fraction of the population of Japan and an even smaller fraction of the land.
I think this is a rather crappy article title. When I actually read the article, it turns out Sony isn't really going anywhere as far as their televisions go. They're spinning off that business...
I think this is a rather crappy article title. When I actually read the article, it turns out Sony isn't really going anywhere as far as their televisions go. They're spinning off that business unit into a new joint venture with TCL. Sony will own 49% of it, with TCL owning the rest. It seems like TCL will be handling manufacturing of the units, this is similar to what Sony already does with OLED panels, it buys them all from LG and doesn't manufacture their own. I imagine this has proven to be a successful practice for Sony, their software is superior to LG (at least in my opinion) and they pair great processors with the panels.
From an outside standpoint as a consumer, I doubt this will be a noticeable change.
I don’t think the title is inaccurate. In terms of control, owning 49% is going to give you as much control as owning 0% if a different party owns 51%. It does mean that Sony still has a financial...
I don’t think the title is inaccurate. In terms of control, owning 49% is going to give you as much control as owning 0% if a different party owns 51%. It does mean that Sony still has a financial stake, and therefore should be willing to offer the new TCL owned spinoff any support necessary, but nonetheless the new venture is owned and controlled by TCL.
As to alarm, I don’t disagree, but how does the title imply that people should be alarmed?
End of an era. I am probably from the last generation (late millennial/early zoomer threshold) where the name Sony was synonymous with getting the best thing money can buy, and that's gone now: VAIO's its own (terrible) brand now, Bravia TVs are gone, the Xperia smartphones are on their last legs… PlayStation's fine at least so there's that.
To add to your list, Sony mini-disc players and MP3 players. I was so happy with their MP3 players. That is also a thing of the past now.
It’s really too bad that the minidisc format didn’t continue to evolve or at least get a spiritual successor. They fill a niche that nothing based on flash memory can as a result of being more tolerant of abuse and long-lasting — I can buy MDs recorded 20 years ago that have been floating around without a case the whole time that still sound perfect where an SD or CF card would’ve bitrot and a CD/DVD-R would’ve physically degraded and/or gotten all scratched up.
Yeah, too bad. I was a big fan while it lasted. I thought the players themselves were really cool-looking too, and compared to CD players or walkmans, they were far more portable and fir in a pocket more easily. The limited space on each disc also made me more thoughtful about what I listened to. Now you just have open access to millions of songs, and some days I want none of it. Times sure change!
Good god, I miss MiniDisc. It was the perfect music format.
All the tactile feedback of physical media, just right size for portability, capacity that was neither too little to feel limiting or too much so that decision paralysis kicks in with a limitless music supply, mix "tapes" still a thing, form factor that protected the media and looked good doing it, creative playback devices. It makes sense, often the end of a technology line sees a perfection of it.
To be fair, Sony had long stopped manufacturing the actual displays in their TVs. AFAIK, Sony has been buying the majority, if not all, of their displays from LG, which is something of a losing proposition when LG itself is one of the world's largest manufacturer of finished consumer televisions sets.
The point of buying a Sony TV over the others, though, was the far better design of their accessory components. Sony had one of the best upscalers, for instance, so your old media would look just a bit better on theirs than their competition with the same exact panel. Sony also never really stopped making a minimum baseline of quality for their remote controls, with all of the ones I've seen actually having all the buttons you'd expect of a TV remote. Their software was also better and they tend to behave better as a system than most manufactuers do: my Sony TV is the only one I've ever owned that actually handles CEC correctly.
TCL seems to be a fairly decent company as far as I'm aware, but my only experience with them was their very low end which I purchased for my dying grandmother. Who knows how much of the Sony "sauce" will survive?
I believe the top end Bravia's currently use QD-OLED panels, which are manufactured by Samsung. So like most companies manufacturing displays, they use both Samsung and LG panels. Not sure if they use panels from BOE (Chinese company), which is the other big display panel player (which the two big Korean companies have been wrestling with, including IP lawsuits).
I agree; as further evidence the iPhone got its start using Samsung SoCs and panels with Apple's secret sauce and became a massive success. Sony had the opportunity to do something similar but it seems TVs have become hopelessly commoditized in the eyes of the average customer, making the R&D investment into making the best upscalers and TV software worthless. It's sad.
I'm a mid-millennial and yes, i grew up with the idea that 'Sony made the best gadgets', which they really did.
The biggest loss for me is Xperia phones being scaled back and sold in fewer geographies. They were (still are) great high-end smartphones (and they still come with headphone jacks!), but you can't buy them in many places now. Here in Australia you have to risk a shady seller on Amazon or Ebay if you want one. Which is a shame. They are not more expensive than the top end Samsung Galaxies, and i would happily trade my S23 Ultra for the newest Sony Xperia if i could buy it from a reliable source.
It truly is sad to see how the modern Sony Xperia brand is a shell of its former self. I don't believe they were ever truly popular but they do have a lot of enthusiast features everyone else gave up long ago. The recently launched Xperia 1 VII is a really cool phone too. They've ditched their super narrow design for a more conventional aspect ratio but it's still a great phone with great hardware. Given that you are in Australia, you might be able to import one from Japan. I know of a few sites that import phones from Europe and China for the US so I assume there's gotta be one that'll be willing to ship to Australia too. Though I'm not sure if you'll run into any issues with telecoms blocking the phone for being imported.
Yea i can import an unlocked phone for sure, but the trick is to find a reputable importer/seller. Also, when you buy locally (i mean either physically in-store or directly from a local seller online), it is possible to trade in your current phone and thereby save a lot of money, which will probably not be possible if you import something. Then you're stuck selling your current phone by yourself. I'll probably be willing to try all this in a couple of years when my current phone gets even older.
Ayaneo is supposed to be making a spiritual successor phone to the Xperia called the Pocket Play. It's in preproduction right now, and they're hitting delays and are a little on the outs with their community right now over redistributors being prioritized over their crowdfunding backers, but if that clears up, it could be something to keep an eye on.
https://ayaneo.com/product/AYANEO-Pocket-PLAY
That's a spiritual successor the Xperia Play specifically - the Xperia phones were a line of otherwise normal phones. Just with the really good Sony camera app and headphone jacks.
But yeah the whole Ayaneo thing stinks. Their business model is like designing a limited-run handheld twice a year or something, crowdfunding it, then having the next crowdfunded project be up before they've shipped the current one. I don't know how a tiny company can reasonably do that with good QC.
They seem to at least acknowledge the issues their customers have recently presented and are engaging constructively but like imo just grab a Steam Deck, ROG Ally or Analogue Pocket for probably cheaper. https://www.reddit.com/r/ayaneo/comments/1qa8t1j/ayaneo_2026_service_improvement_plan/
EDIT: like seriously look at this thread. four crowdfunded products in flight. how is this sustainable
Yes I remember when Sony made the best devices.
I have some old cassette tapes that I wanted to play so I looked around and there are very players few made now. There are some cheap ones made in China and all the ones I tried are poorly designed and unreliable. I found out that Sony Walkman players that are over 30 years old are often still good after some maintenance of specific parts. There are repair kits for the common problems including capacitors, gears, and belts. Used players can sell for hundreds of dollars.
I miss the variety and quality of mechanical things from the not-too distant past.
Terrible news. Sony TVs are for now some of the lowest-BS options on the market and come with a minimally modified build of Android TV that can easily have the creepy content matching stuff removed and are generally amicable to entirely offline use. I would expect rebadged-TCL-Sony models to be significantly more junked up and to use less capable compute.
Will have to see how finances work out but it might be time to move up the TV upgrade schedule.
I don't see why that would necessarily be the case. TCL famously (or infamously) doesn't do any TV software - they just outsource it to Roku, and the angst with TCL TV software is mostly that Roku sucks.
Now that they presumably have acquired Sony's software, I don't see why they wouldn't just continue using it. Can't imagine it's more expensive than paying Roku licensing when you already spent a bunch of money acquiring it. It's not like TCL particularly wants to evangelize the software of a different (and American!) company if they don't have to.
We’ll see. If Sony is willing to keep paying their TV software team, it’s possible that TCL will continue to use the Sony software, but otherwise it’s simpler from a supply chain, operational, and support standpoint to shift “Sony” TVs to the standard TCL stack except for Sony’s special sauce image processing chip.
TCL also likely gets a kickback from Roku on spyware/analytics revenue which could shift the balance in that direction too.
Minor nitpick, but TCL also sells Fire TV and Google TV based models, as well as the Roku ones. Costco has carried both the Fire/Google TV ones in my area for a while now.
I've only ever seen the Roku TCL models at Walmart, now that I think of it.
Does it? My memory is that for its faults, Amazon and Google TV software were much worse. I have a TCL TV with Roku and used Roku sticks to help my mother cut the cable TV cord, and my assessment is that they're Fine.
The ads stink as all ads do, but I like how on the default settings they prioritize showing inputs and the apps you have installed by default, instead of showing you the contents of Amazon/YouTube TV. It makes sense, given they make deals with these streaming companies instead of having a streaming service of their own to upsell you on.
I have actually experienced a sharp decline in performance over the years in the two Bravia TVs that my family owns. Both in terms of compute power of the hardware and the software getting worse and more bloated. Granted our TVs are several years old now, but you would naturally want such expensive electronics to endure for 6-7 years.
If this joint venture can improve the hardware power and the software, that would be great. But i would not expect it, given that all consumer electronics, no matter who manufactures them, are being designed with short lifespans and planned obsolescence in order to sell us the next shiny product.
In fact, if they make Bravias cheaper, i would definitely expect the quality and experience to get worse, so i agree with you on that.
Have you tried factory resetting the TVs?
I’m using an upper-midrange Bravia from 2018 and it performs better now than it did brand new thanks to a firmware update. I’ve kept it offline the whole time and outsourced “smarts” to an Apple TV 4K, though (firmware updated with a USB thumb drive).
If the Apple TV box is doing the computing for you and you're just using the TV as a display i suppose you dont have to deal with the TV's OS, no matter how slow it is.
That's another thing....it is almost impossible now to find a high-end TV now that is non-smart, just a good display panel, to which you can attach a mini PC or a more powerful Android box.
I mean, the behavior on pretty much every smart TV I’ve ever used is that if you select an HDMI input, and don’t change it, the UI won’t even come up. Or maybe there’ll be a brief splash screen on startup.
Either way, if you just want to have another box do all the TV-ing I’m pretty sure almost every TV out there will do that just fine.
I've experienced something similar actually with my parent's Bravia. Granted it is a 2015 model but some update around the time of the pandemic really brought the Android UI to a crawl. Nowadays my parents use an Apple TV so it's not too big a deal for them but I really do wonder what happened.
There was a major Android TV update a few years ago that basically made the whole thing more expensive to run once they added a giant ad banner at the top half of the home screen that also played video, and live updated the tiles there for whatever has paid for promotion.
And with that, the last of the Japanese TV manufacturers ends. That being said, I imagine the TCL x Bravia TVs would probably do just fine - the high end TCL TVs perform as well as any other manufacturer's. But it does mean that none of the manufacturers are domestically owned in Japan anymore.
Somewhat remarkable the way Korean companies leapfrogged the Japanese tech giants over the last few decades. Chinese companies as well, of course, but Korea has a fraction of the population of Japan and an even smaller fraction of the land.
I think this is a rather crappy article title. When I actually read the article, it turns out Sony isn't really going anywhere as far as their televisions go. They're spinning off that business unit into a new joint venture with TCL. Sony will own 49% of it, with TCL owning the rest. It seems like TCL will be handling manufacturing of the units, this is similar to what Sony already does with OLED panels, it buys them all from LG and doesn't manufacture their own. I imagine this has proven to be a successful practice for Sony, their software is superior to LG (at least in my opinion) and they pair great processors with the panels.
From an outside standpoint as a consumer, I doubt this will be a noticeable change.
I don’t think the title is inaccurate. In terms of control, owning 49% is going to give you as much control as owning 0% if a different party owns 51%. It does mean that Sony still has a financial stake, and therefore should be willing to offer the new TCL owned spinoff any support necessary, but nonetheless the new venture is owned and controlled by TCL.
As to alarm, I don’t disagree, but how does the title imply that people should be alarmed?