Your device has been modified and now Now TV is broken - Sony XPeria Z tablet

[Anonymous User]

Probably the same as the Hudl 2 post. My Xperia Z tablet has been migrated to 5.1.1 and by official Sony updates, 5.1 and now 5.1.1. As soon as it went to 5 Now TV started whining that the device had been modified and it would no longer run. I even hid my soldering iron as I thought this was probably the only physical way of "modifying" the device! As this was an official Sony update, the device has never been rooted and Sony aren't what you might call a small company I rather thought a solution would be forthcoming. However, several months down the line, an even newer software update from Sony, not side loaded or anything else of that nature, and the problem still persists. It can't be beyond Sky's budgets to go out and get a Hudl 2 and a couple of Sony tablets, reproduce the issue and fix it! 

I have tried, at Now TV's insistance, a complete device reset, have uninstalled and reinstalled the app, cleared caches and app data and still it whines on. To be honest I've uninstalled it and basically given up on it, but just by some slim chance it does ever get fixed I'll keep an eye on this thread.

[Anonymous User]

I installed the app AFTER I updated to 5.1.1.
My tablet is SGP311. Its exactly the same as yours except mine is WiFi only.
There's an update for the app out today. Have you tried updated app today?
I confirm mine is still working on my tablet

[Anonymous User]

Thanks for the heads up about the update.

> I installed the app AFTER I updated to 5.1.1.

That may be quite interesting. I suspect that the NowTV app has written something to NV RAM or Flash or somesuch which a device reset fails to clear. I also suspect that whatever it has written may be what's telling the app that the device has been modified. If that is the case I have no idea how to clear it or how to report my suspicions to the app developers. It maybe why they requested that I did a complete reset.

[Anonymous User]

Updated app but it still thinks my device has been modified.  It's becoming obvious that the app doesn't like being installed and then having a system update applied.  Why can't I report bugs to the app developers? Posting stuff to a forum, while cathartic, doesn't let the app developers know there's an issue 😞

[Anonymous User]

I installed AVG and it detects that the device is in "High Privilege" mode and says the device has been rooted, but then doesn't explain how comes to that conclusion nor does it offer any advice. As I think I mentioned before none of the un-rooters run beacuse they say the device has not been rooted! However going through the re-root by hand instructions offered in various places there is an "su" executable in /system/xbin. Would that alone be enough to trigger "your device has been rooted"? How do I remove it? Am I going to have to root te device in order to remove this file?!?!

[Anonymous User]

@Anonymous User an SU binary will be one of the triggers. Have you tried the Full Unroot option within the SuperSU app?

[Anonymous User]

🙂 SuperSU won't run because it says the device has not been rooted! I wondered if going in via adb shell and then using the su that's there to elevate to root, remounting the device in rw mode before deleting the same su file would work.

[Anonymous User]

I'm not convinced that's the problem. I don't think the issue is installing the app, then do a system update. There would be tons of complaints from all kinds of device owners. The issue is specific to your tablet. I just don't know what.

[Anonymous User]

I've been experiencing the same issue, I just bought a refurbished second hand phone and I am receiving the same issue. It's pretty poor if you can not do anything about this like you have said.

[Anonymous User]

For  me the fix was to download the official software updater from Sony, called Xperia Companion, and use it to reinstall the official android version. Once this had been done NowTV worked again. Don't know if the device had been tampered with before I got it but the battery life is now much better, which is often a sign of tampering. It was apparent that the Sony management tool was probably doing a complete reFlash while the updates downloaded on the device itself were not. Hope this helps.