Hitachi, Sanyo and Schneider: what they ship with and what comes off

Hitachi built televisions for sixty years. Sanyo was one of the great Japanese names of the last century. Schneider dates from 1934 and its own website calls the brand "a pioneer in radio and television technology in France". None of the three builds the televisions that carry its name today, and this site's directory proves it without anyone having to be taken at their word.

Four, two and nine entries#

For every model, the directory records the device the set itself reports: the platform it is built on. It comes from Google Play's list of supported devices, not from a sales catalogue.

Hitachi has four entries, Sanyo two and Schneider nine. In total the directory covers 2,437 entries from 536 brands across 390 platforms. Not one of those 390 platforms is exclusive to any of the three.

And there is something better than that. The platforms nest inside each other:

• Sanyo: R1 and R2.
• Hitachi: R1, R2, komagome and bangbae.
• Schneider: those four, plus martin, osaka, barking and beaudry.

Sanyo's two sit inside Hitachi's, and Hitachi's four sit inside Schneider's eight. There is not a single platform Hitachi has and Schneider does not.

The proof, word for word#

These directory rows are literal, exactly as Google publishes them:

Hitachi,ATV R1,Android TV,R1,tv
Sanyo,ATV R1,Android TV,R1,tv
SCHNEIDER,ATV R1,Android TV,R1,tv
JVC,ATV R1,Android TV,R1,tv
Nokia,ATV R1,Android TV,R1,tv
Thomson,ATV R1,Android TV,R1,tv
Acer,ATV R1,Android TV,R1,tv
Hyundai,ATV R1,Android TV,R1,tv
Panasonic,PANASONIC TV,Android TV,R1,tv

Eight brands declaring the same model, ATV R1, and Panasonic declaring PANASONIC TV on the same set. R1 carries 46 brands and R2 48. komagome carries 26 and bangbae 31, with Hitachi and Schneider alongside JVC, Blaupunkt, Hyundai, Kivi, Dyon, Dual, Strong and Polaroid. And on martin, where Hitachi no longer appears but Schneider does, 46 brands share even the same commercial territory string, character for character: EU、UK、AP.

Adding up all their platforms, Hitachi shares hardware with 77 other brands, Sanyo with 52 and Schneider with 163.

Who answers for the warranty#

No guesswork is needed here: selling a television in the European Union means registering it in EPREL, the European Commission's energy label database, and that registration carries the name of the responsible firm.

Searching HITACHI under electronic displays, EPREL returns 265 records. In the 52 that could be downloaded, the word Hitachi never once appears as the responsible party: 34 are filed under Vestel Holland B.V., five under its German branch office and 13 under Gruppo Industriale Vesit S.p.A., which on its own site describes itself as "the exclusive distributor for Italy of the Vestel Group". These are models like the 43HAK5350, the 50HAK5750 and the 55HK5601.

Tellingly, that same Vesit page lists the names Vestel currently manages under brand licensing agreements ("Toshiba, Telefunken, JVC and Daewoo") and Hitachi is no longer on the list.

Searching SCHNEIDER returns 125 records. The 39 downloaded are filed under two firms: Renaissance Public Service SRL (rserv.ro) and Gestion Marketing et Stratégie. All of them declare two years of warranty and eight of software updates; the Hitachi records that declare anything put zero years of warranty and the same eight of software.

Searching SANYO returns zero records. Not one. Tried with the prefix SANY too, in case the search demanded the exact word: still zero, while HITAC returns the same 265. No registration means no Sanyo television lawfully placed on the European market.

The name and the company#

Schneider says it on its own site, on the licence information page: "SCHNEIDER and the SCHNEIDER logo are trademarks of Schneider Consumer IP and are used under license from Schneider Consumer IP. SCHNEIDER licensees are solely responsible for the SCHNEIDER branded products manufactured, distributed and sold under license."

Its legal notice identifies Schneider Consumer IP as a company with €4,000 of share capital, registered in the Paris Trade and Companies Register under number 811 076 454, with its office at 22 rue Chauchat. The contact address for personal data is [email protected]: the same licensing firm behind RCA, Blaupunkt, Thomson, Saba and Proscan, which declares 20 brands and a presence in more than fifty countries.

One detail closes the circle. The directory holds a Schneider whose reported model is GMS55A1G, and EPREL registers Schneider GMS65A2, GMS43F1 and GMS50F1. GMS are the initials of Gestion Marketing et Stratégie, the French licensee. The licensee's initials sit inside the name the television reports over ADB.

Hitachi and Sanyo, two absences#

The BBC reported it on 23 January 2012: Hitachi announced it would stop making televisions from that September, having already outsourced all overseas production two years earlier. Today Hitachi's European home page runs to 1,461 words and not one of them is "television", "TV" or "consumer": its sections are Digital, Energy, Mobility and Industry.

The domains from the television years are gone too. hitachi-tv.com, hitachiconsumer.eu, hitachidigitalmedia.com, es.hitachi.com, sanyo.com and sanyo.eu do not resolve; hitachi.es refuses the connection and hitachiuk.com times out.

Sanyo does have a site, sanyo-av.com, and it is the strangest of the three. Written in the first person ("SANYO is a Fortune 500 Japanese Electronics Company headquartered in Osaka, Japan") about a company Panasonic absorbed, with a single country selector offering the United States, Canada and Mexico, and a footer reading "©2025 FUNAI CORPORATION, INC.". Its televisions run Roku, not Android. In Europe, that Sanyo does not exist.

How to tell which one you own#

Stop searching by brand and search by platform:

adb shell getprop ro.product.device

Whatever comes back (R1, komagome, martin, whatever it is) is what to look up in the directory. And here is the useful part: a Schneider's package list works for the Hitachi that shares its platform, because the software does not come from the name on the front. Given the structure above, any list that works for a Sanyo works for a Hitachi and for a Schneider too.

If you have no ADB to hand, Settings → System → About shows the model and the Android version, which already narrows it down.

What comes off and what does not#

Every entry for the three brands in the directory is Android TV, and Schneider's own television and audio catalogue confirms "Android 9.0 (Pie)" on its SC400 and SC500 series, with Chromecast and Google Play Store.

Goes without a second thought: the streaming apps you do not use, the free content channels on the home screen and the demo modes, very common in this range because these sets are designed to look good on a supermarket shelf.

Look first: the recommendation engine (com.google.android.tvrecommendations) leaves the screen clean, but it also empties the "continue watching" row.

Do not touch: Google Play services (com.google.android.gms), the launcher (com.google.android.leanbacklauncher on Android TV) and anything starting with com.android. you cannot identify.

All of this is reversible: a disabled package comes back with one command, and a factory reset returns the set to its out-of-the-box state.

If you own one#

From these televisions one thing above all is useful: the output of adb shell getprop ro.product.device together with the brand and the commercial model. The general method is in cleaning up an own-brand TV, and the same mechanism seen from the other side is in the piece on Blaupunkt, Hyundai and JVC.