Android TV 1 (very) poor Network performance

[nicogri]

Hi guys,

just a new thread to tell you guys how I am disappointed (sort of) with my new Android TV from Sony KD65XD9305.


I just bought this TV with a pretty great discount (2000€) and picture quality is very good.


For Android TV, I find it stable and fine. The main reason I chose Sony was for Android TV (I didn't wanted WebOS or Tizen).


So as I use the TV ONLY with network stored media, I plugged the Ethernet cable to get something reliable and fast...


HORROR !!! Ethernet port is not Gigabit... Sony are you kidding me ??? How do you plan to stream 4K HDR content to the TV with 100 Mb link ???


Let's do some math : Movie 2h00 / 63 GB = 64512MB to send to TV in 2 Hr so / 7200 = 9 Mb /s we are pretty close of the max we can output on 100mb network so as the bitrate is variable and some actions scene require much more of it you get bad picture lag and audio drop in half of the movie.

To confirm that it was not decoding problem, I putted the file on an external HDD plugged directly into the TV and had no problem at all.

So I wrote you a mail Sony, to explain that to you... 1 week later I got a person with no knowledge whatever who told me that I needed to run a speedtest because it was my internet (WAN) connection that was slow.

Just LOL ^^

I told myself that I was doomed.

So I search again and discovered that the Onboard wifi was 5 Ghz AC compatible. Maybe a way out.

So I droped my Cisco Meraki 300N Wifi and I got a TPLink Archer C7 C1750 (so it meens 900 Mb theorical on AC 5 Ghz)

It could have solved my bandwith problem on local network !!!

And guess what... it didn't because I think wifi chip or driver or ??? is total crap...

The TV is at less than 1 meter of the access point (no wall...), connected at 5 Ghz and I can't get download bandwith to a minimum of 100 Mb (a joke).

If I do the same test from the same spot with the same app at the same time on the same wifi of the same network with my phone (Google Nexus 6P) I get approx 230 mb of bandwith.

Screen cap are just at the bottom

What do you want to answer to that ???

So your Smart TV of 2016 is just to slow to play a 4k movie of 2016 (I tried Mad Max and Deadpool) on local network (no matter how good network connection is, I have full gigabit network at home).

So now my very precise question : Do you plan to adress this problem Seriously upgrading Wifi driver / firmware to get real fast connexion (as I am sure you cannot upgrade wired card to gigabit with software upgrade) ?

I am available if you need more statistics and / or informations with the test environment.

[nicogri]

OK so our results confirm themself...

Wifi is better with new version

Wifi still misses half performance.

Tested with multiple devices in multiple environments (my house / your house).

Now I am clearly hesitating on re opening a ticket to Sony support now because of update roll out...

The rep is gonna tell me to factory reset, after that he/she is going to tell me because update is not stable and has been roll out so the definitive version is gonna fix it.

So maybe it is better to wait the real stable MM official on OTA blahblahblah which is not gonna change anything but they will not be able to say that next update is gonna fix it.

Or I loose some time just right now for pleasure 😉

[Kuschelmonschter]

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So maybe it is better to wait the real stable MM official on OTA blahblahblah which is not gonna change anything but they will not be able to say that next update is gonna fix it.

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Sony already announced Nougat for all Android TV sets. So that will be the next excuse for the support. It will always be the next firmware...

[Haikgh]

Hello.

Have you found a USB 3.0 Ethernet adaptor for out TV's so far ?

Thanks

[sergio_sch]

Another one with a 55XD9305 impressed by the poor network perfomance of this TV.

I bought it thinking of being able to play big files from my shared gigabit network folders, instead wired doesn't reach the 100Mb theoretical speed and Wifi AC doesn't improve that number either. If I try to play mkv bigger than 20Gb I get stutters, buffering stops at any bitrate peak, resulting in unsuccess feature.

Marshmallow recent official "good" update didn't fix things.... I'm sorry to start my contribution to this forum this way but this is really crap.

If I was millionare I would throw the TV by my balcony but I will have to live with it about 10 years , I hope.

Thanks a lot basically to @nicogri for your patience and dedication in investigating the network perfomance issue, if I was younger and not having headaches I would have probably done your research, now I'm too old.

If any of us discover any way to improve Wifi AC perfomance please come back here to share feedback.

Good luck mates

[rapraprap]

I've been at it for hours trying to improve my speed, but no dice. SMB over wifi maxes out at around 45 Mbps and LAN at 65 Mbps, and neither suffice for my needs. My TV (KD-49XD7004, 2016 model) has the newer (ATV2) MediaTek5891 chipset, running Nougat. AIDA64 gives 'no USB devices found' under Devices.

No combination of settings seems to do the trick - client, server, and router side. a/c/b/g/n, all different channels and frequenices, what have you...

Pretty fed up with Sony's horrible implementation of networking in these devices. I guess I'll have to spring for a USB adapter. This is really silly.

[rapraprap]

An update for you guys:

Having given up on SMB I've now tried a UPnP implementation, which works well. I haven't bothered testing the speeds, but high bitrate HEVC files are playing fine (they didn't work with samba). Their bitrate exceeds 100Mbps, so that's nice. Freaking Sony.

I've set up Gerbera on my Ubuntu Server, and also on my OpenSuse install just to test. Gerbera is a fork of the deprecated MediaTomb. I haven't played around too much, but as I mentioned, it works. Finally. I'll have a look at media scraping, database setup, security etc, and report back. I'll see if I find the time to write up a general review/experience thing with this TV, with tips and tricks and how I've set it up -- I'll make a separate thread if and when I get around to it.

For now, let's just say maybe save yourself the headache and try a UPnP focused approach if you have no aversions to it.

Cheers.

edit:

Using Kodi, by the way. I have found that Kodi's internal player handles 4K very well. I will try with both VLC (whose latest beta has excellent implementation in Android TV, with PiP and all, and the remote control context buttons like subtitles etc work really well, it's crazy nice) and MX Player. Kodi has a problem pushing network files to external players -- no problem with local files. I prefer external players because Kodi's MediaSurface codec treatment means that the video cannot play in the background, you cannot switch task or even open the Action Menu to change the picture settings. If anyone has any interest in working together to set up a nice home theater using Kodi, let me know -- it's remarkably well-functioning.

[Kuschelmonschter]

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rapraprap schrieb:

I prefer external players because Kodi's MediaSurface codec treatment means that the video cannot play in the background, you cannot switch task or even open the Action Menu to change the picture settings.

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With SPMC (=KODI fork) you can, also see my review. You will also find a section on networking performance.

I haven't measured SMB yet, but NFS gave me roughly the same performance as UPnP which is >100mbps. UPnP database integration isn't easy. I have no clue whether this got "fixed" by now.

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rapraprap schrieb:

No combination of settings seems to do the trick - client, server, and router side. a/c/b/g/n, all different channels and frequenices, what have you...

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You will most likely need a reliable 5GHz 802.11ac network to get higher data rates.

[Jecht_Sin]

Personally I've found that the best combination in terms of performances (but also usability) is:

• WIFi 5GHz ac
• Plex server with DLNA enabled
• Sony's Video app

Video doesn't support subtitles, but in case one can use the Plex client. It does work fine with UHD HDR videos even 40GB in size (c'mon, I had to test it! ). The Plex client stutters with many UHD HDR demo videos (at very high bitrate) while Video usually does the job. Also the Plex client may get confused about some video formats. Video plays nearly all of them.

The Plex server is great because allows us to divide the contents in libraries recognised by DLNA also automatically adding posters and stuff that get showed in DLNA as well.

I'd like Kodi as a client, but it's too heavy for my taste. And honestly the controls are far from intuitive. They are fine with a mouse, not really with a tv remote.

[rapraprap]

The situation is I kinda need it elegant, which may sound stupid and elegance is certainly a subjective matter, but I really enjoy having a nice setup for my media, and I've found this with the latest Kodi and the skin Arctic Zephyr. The rest of the TV is setup nicely enough, with the Google-related apps and services and annoying ad-like stuff disabled and hidden. Apps and peripherals are working well, and Kodi is responsive and handles everything fine, and passes select files on to external players in just the way I like (except, for some reason, with network files, which I'll look into). I honestly wouldn't even mind having a dedicated drive connected to the TV, but the silly PoS quietly turns on in standby mode every few minutes (you can check this if you connect a peripheral that lights up when supplied with power), presumably to send statistics to Sony or Netflix or something, and it causes the drive to spin up and shut down all the time, hence the the need for a home server (which is nice to have anyway).

Getting stuff to play in some way or another hasn't really been a problem, and as you suggested 5GHz ac and DLNA certainly works, as do many other configs -- it's getting it to work consistently and in the way I like it that's the issue. I can manage to get Kodi (and other players) to play UHD content, locally and over the network, but it's like a game of whac-a-mole, where you fix one thing but another one pops up. For example, I've got Kodi setup very nicely, with access to everything that I need in a unified, consistent and visually appealing user interface. I've managed to set up SMB, NFS and DLNA just fine -- but each will end up having an issue. With SMB and NFS I can't get bandwith that's decent enough for high bitrate files, which files comprise a substantial part of my library. With DLNA I can play these files, but can't get the library view I want, with all my meticulously sorted and collected metadata, artwork, cross-referenced indexing and so forth. If I run kodi on my server with my media connected directly to it, and organize the library on that Kodi, and then share the Kodi library itself through DLNA, it works fine: except, of course, for a bunch of small, unexpected annoyances, like Kodi not being able to enter the information view screen on media, despite the settings being set to this behavior, and despite it working with a local library. I get a lot of enjoyment out of configuring stuff like this to my liking, it's just so frustrating that the difficulties are caused by the networking adapter Sony uses, and it's not even the adapter itself (at least with wifi) but the ridiculous implementation.

I'm gonna try setting up an FTP server to see what's up. I'll try to setup plex as well, to if it suits my tasted, though in the end I think I'll just use SMB for my preferred navigational library needs, then I'll make a separate DLNA share through Kodi where I'll play the UHD files from. It is so indescribably annoying that everything is so easy, so intutive to set up, and just works, and then it fails because of something so silly on Sony's part, a freaking wifi connection managing 40 Mbps on a theoretic 800-something.

Phew.

EDIT:

You guys are saying you're getting >100Mbps on 5Ghz ac, but I\m not able to recreate this. Using the same app you were using earlier in the thread, Wifi Speed Test I think, I get 45 Mbps on my samba server with the network correctly configured

EDIT2:

I've tried all channels available now for the router on 5GHz ac, same results on SMB. But the connection is reported correctly anyway, and DLNA works fine. Maybe I'll see about a custom firmware, but honestly, the router is broadcasting at 5GHz ac and the devices are picking it up correctly, it's just SMB not working well it seems... anyone feel like checking what they get on SMB over wifi and lan?

and thanks very much for the tip about SPMC, I will have a look. Then I can just forget about external players and such I suppose

[ssbarnea]

I am curious if anyone managed to find a way to stream 65Mbps x265 movie on Bravia 2015 TVs?

Explanation: 4K HDR with 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos has ~65Mbps bandstream (that's the one used by blueray too).

Based on my tests the TV, even after the the upgrade to Android 6.0.1 is able to get only about ~62Mbps in perfect conditions regardless WiFi LAN, and I tested multiple times, thee NAS is able to stream a 90+Mbps without any delays.

Sony could fix this by adding extra buffering, even by using external USB if they need or by optimizing the firmware to squeeze the 5% performance boost needed on network speed but obviously they have other priorities .... like avoiding so many crashes on the TV software.

The irony is that even if I have a PS4 PRO, that is not able to play those movies because PS4 Pro cannot decode x265 (HECV) either, even if the hardware had enough power to do it.