KDL50W829B Media Player crashing when connecting External HDD through USB

[Vlad87]

Hi, 

Recently purchased the KDL50W829B and have no problems with it except for one, but it's a major one, as being able to play media from an external USB HDD was one of the reasons for upgrading. I am using a WD 500GB HDD only containing video files of various formats, no mp3s or other types of files on it. the problem is as follows:

1. I plug in the HDD into the USB socket

2. TV recognises it and asks if I want to launch the Media Player (whether I chose Yes, or No and launch it myself through Home button, makes no difference, I've tried every way possible) 

3. (When in Media Player) At this stage time varies but the result is always the same. Sometimes it crashes when trying to access the Media Player. Sometimes it crashes while scanning the files on the HDD. Sometimes it scans and displayes all the media on the HDD and crashes when I try to browse them. Sometimes it even lets me play a file or two, but most times it doesn't. 

4. No matter what, the result in the end is always the same. I get a window saying: "Unfortunately the Media Player has stopped" and OK button to press.

5. Ussually I'm not even fast enough to press the OK and the TV powers down and reboots with black screen and SONY on it. The time of the reboot always varies but after it turns itself on again it goes to either TV or HDMI1

6. Here is the strange part and the most anoying one. If I just leave it there after the reboot watching normal TV and don't unplug the HDD it will go through the reboot process over and over againg every 90 seconds (timed it) even if I don't try to access the HDD. And it will keep rebooting untill I unplug the HDD.

7. I have also tried a Toshiba 160GB HDD freshly formated with just a handfull of files on it with the same results. So I doubt it's the HDD problem.

8. Read somewhere that HDD might need more power so I tried the Y USB cable to utilize both USB inputs to provide more power to the HDD with no luck.

Has anyone else experienced similar problems? Is there a way to fix this (maybe an alternative way to use HDD without launching the Media Player) or do I have to return the TV? I really wouldn't want to do that as I like everything else about it, but inability to watch a lot of the media I have on my eternal drives is a real dealbreaker.

Thanks

[frmello]

It's a separate issue. My tv doesn't crash, it just cannot see the media server.

Bw

Fred

[Anonymous]

HI @Vlad87 

This is a guess : As I escalated this thread to Sony it also goes to Sony's 1st Line support.  The escalation got passed to the Technical Team. I am assuming that the call you received was a mistake, as this problem is no longer 1st line support.  The call centre is technically outsourced to Egypt, where-as the technical team is not. 

You do have an individual number associated with this escalation - but due to my lack of knowledge, im not sure what this number is (case number maybe) - but in the process of asking.

At current time, everything is status quo and no further information has been received.  Can I assume you have tried remuxing the files?  Or re-encoding them?

Cheers

[Vlad87]

Small update, 

Only got around to remuxing one file with the program recomended previousely. The file worked fine, no problems what so ever, but don't really have time or hard drive space for remuxing the whole video library as it will create a new file of the same size for each video doubling the space required for the video files. I don't have 400+ films like starwarsclark, but I have a lot, definetely more than 200 and doing one at a time really isn't an option. That's it for now, waiting for new developments.

Cheers,

Vlad

P.S. This was the first time I used this program. Just tried doing two files at the same time and it doesn't really work (maybe it's me though) so it looks like I would definetely have to do one file at a time even if I had the space availabe, or open the program 200 times adding a different file in each and run them all at the same time lol. Not really a solution so far.

[bertybaron]

I have a similar issue with my 815(same as 829 except bezel colour).

I can see my 700gb HDD and a number of files but just enough files to fit on the TV screen. There are many many more files but I cannot see them. Pressing "more" does absolutely nothing. It was crashing but doesn't crash anymore, it will only show me one page of files and won't progress to further pages for some reason. I haven't found issues with it not playing files, just finding files.

As another example, when I press discover and head to pictures I can see about 20 of the photos except I have 1,000's on the HDD but again the "more" button does nothing.(just flashes).

I have taken one of the files I cannot see, put this on another USB device, and it shows up and does play.

Any ideas folks or our experts please?

[charlao]

Same problem here, started last week. 

I've wrote sony spain and no feedbacks whatsoever... mine is a KDL-32W705b.

[danzig440]

I'm also having this problem, will load and play all video files on my hardrive then after about 20 minutes a pop up shows and says the media player has stopped working. Another pop up shows and says media player is not responding, would you like to close it? then it says wait or ok. Then 5 seconds later it will say Unfortunately media player has stopped working.

Tv Model is KDL-60W600B.

[timoooo]

Hi,

I had the same problem with my external HDD but not with my USB. So I think the problem lies within the fact that it is NTFS formatted and can be solved by formatting the external HDD to exFat. I tried and could watch a movie for 25 minutes without crashing (I haven't been able to test for more time, but it seems plausible that the problem lies within the fact that it was NTFS formatted). HTH

[pollcr]

I am now getting the same issues, with a Synology DS414, that has been working fine until today, reset the TV and powered off, now I am getting media player has stopped etc.   This TV was great when we first got it a few months ago,but after updates the TV is getting worse and slow when going through the menus.  Come on Sony this is not good enough.

[pollcr]

I just want to say a Factory reset and two reboots and then tuning the Digital has now fixed the issue for now.

[garfield100]

This issue was beginning to drive me nuts and I thought the TV's USB sockets were perhaps defective, until I discovered this thread.

I purchased a new KDL-42W705B earlier this week. It upgraded to software version PKG-2.263EUA shortly after connecting to internet for first time.

I use a couple of FAT32 formatted 8GB to 32GB pen drives.  These contain AVI, MP4 and MKV files.

I have encountered various issues where the Media Player displays the stop message when trying to start a video, or simply just returns to the file selection screen, and/or crashes and reboots the TV, when specifically trying to use two of the six pen drives which contain mostly MKV files.

All my MKVs are always remuxed using MKToolnix 3.0.0.  (I used to own a BDP-S370 and remuxing helped most but not all MKV files).

With one particular Kingston Traveler G3 32GB drive.  I did also reformat the pen drive, and place just a handful of MKV and MP4 files.  It worked fine.   But as soon as I restored all the remaining 20GB of AVI/MP4/MKV files, the above 'Media Player has stopped' issue returns.

I replicated the issue onto a HP V195B (FAT32) pen drive which I did not reformat by simply copying the above 20GB of files to add to the existing 5GB of files stored on it.

After selectively deleting files off the HP pen drive, I seem to have narrowed the issue down to presence of two particular MP4 files.  Deleting these two files off the Kingston pen drive seems to have cured the problem too.  These two MP4 files play fine on my previous EX723 TV.  I will remux them to MKV format later using MKToolnix 3.0.0.

Update: MKVmerge GUI 3.0.0 could not open these two particular MP4 files.  

I have discovered if I place these problematic MP4 files onto a USB flash drive, inserted into my router running DLNA server, the W705B sees the files via DLNA but will not play them.  ie. does not crash the media player app.  

Conclusion is it would appear error handling over DLNA is far better than from USB when dealing with the presence of incompatible media files.    ie. TV is less likely to crash via DLNA.

(Update Feb 2015:  With Sony announcing that most of their new 2015 TVs will be using Android, I doubt Sony will ever 'improve' or fix the issues with the Media player app and USB causing TV to crash, as they have known about this problem for a year.   Consider buying something like a WD TV Media Player to connect to your Bravia TV - it is not perfect, check WDC forum, but it will play virtually all files without issues.  It also fixes the intermittent 'stutter/frame sklip' issue I frequently witness when playing lower bit rate MKV files using the Media Player app)

fwiw: Mediainfo report:

General
Complete name : ******
Format : MPEG-4
Format profile : Base Media
Codec ID : isom
File size : 476 MiB
Duration : 1h 0mn
Overall bit rate : 1 091 Kbps
Writing application : ******

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L3.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 5 frames
Codec ID : avc1
Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding
Duration : 1h 0mn
Bit rate : 954 Kbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 404 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.131
Stream size : 416 MiB (87%)
Writing library : x264 core 140 r2377 1ca7bb9
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=umh / subme=8 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=12 / lookahead_threads=2 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=2 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=50 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=19.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00
Language : English
Matrix coefficients : BT.709
Color range : Limited

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AAC
Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec
Format profile : LC
Codec ID : 40
Duration : 1h 0mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 124 Kbps
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel positions : Front: L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 53.9 MiB (11%)