The Sony Android TV Experience (ATV2/XF9005)

[Kuschelmonschter]

I am currently testing a Sony BRAVIA KD-65XF9005. A respective review can be found here. It is mainly about Sony's integration of Android TV in ATV2 based products, therefore applying to all BRAVIA sets released after mid-2016. There is also a new ATV2 Bug-Tracker.

Things didn't change in a dramatic way compared to Sony's ATV1 platform, suffering more or less from the same shortcomings and bugs. The biggest achievement in those 3 years seems to be that Amazon Prime Video finally plays smoothly without major dropouts.

[rapraprap]

Just wanted to say thanks for working so hard on all of this. Unfortunately, very little seems to have come out of it from Sony's side so far, but your efforts really are appreciated. I have taken a look at your ATV2 bug tracker, which is very organized and informative.

I'm getting ready to use my KD-49XD7004 again after being away for a while. I was following a few threads here about a year ago, but lost track a bit. If you don't mind, I'd love if it if you could just inform/update me on these issues:

1. Poor ac wifi performance: while I've given up on ethernet, it seems like the speed of the ac wifi should be fixable by drivers. Any progress here?

2. The VPN rebooting issues. Did we ever get to the root of exactly why this happens? Let alone how to fix it. I remember one user mentioning it had to do with the sony DTV service, but I don't recall the details.

3. x264 10 bit, x265/HEVC, etc video playback. What is the situation here exactly? Should it handle x264 in 10 bit @ 1080p? I remember some chopping horribly. And does it actually have well functioning hardware decoding for x265? I remember some x265 @ 2160p being choppy, but others playing fine. Is there a difference between using Kodi or VLC as opposed to the sony player? Is there a difference between playing a file from a removable storage and streaming over LAN (granted that the transfer rate is stable in the latter)?

4. The 6.5603 update. I haven't gotten it, and on the support site it says that there's been a delay with launching it. Are you on this version number? Any improvements brought with it?

5. Do you know which system apps are safe to disable through adb? For example, I disable everything Google related, because I don't use it. I don't use the actual cable TV functions on the set, just apps. Can the Sony stuff be disabled? Like the DTV service etc?

6. There are some issued on the ATV1 bug tracker on github but not the ATV2, like the frequent wakeups from deep sleep. I remember having this all the time, the TV would wake up a million times during the night (could tell from the connected hard drive spinning up). Has this been worked on or resolved?

Thanks for your help. I figured I'd ask you here since you've taken the time to test all these thing. Hope that's fine.

[SesioNLive]

5. Do you know which system apps are safe to disable through adb? For example, I disable everything Google related, because I don't use it. I don't use the actual cable TV functions on the set, just apps. Can the Sony stuff be disabled? Like the DTV service etc?

Try this on your own risk.

https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=74521466&postcount=1259

[Kuschelmonschter]

1. Poor ac wifi performance: while I've given up on ethernet, it seems like the speed of the ac wifi should be fixable by drivers. Any progress here?

Wi-Fi throughput measured in at 260mbps using WiFi Speed Test with a fast Windows server at the other end. This was at optimal conditions with the AP being positioned in the same room in direct line of sight with no other WiFi clients in the 5GHz band.

5GHz radio performance on Sony is pretty awful though. Go through one wall and you can barely stream the thin Netflix and Prime Video streams.

I did not publish those measurements anymore as it does not translate to network playback performance at all. With Kodi, I could go up to the 120mbps jelly fish video sample. Anything above that was not smooth anymore over network. Over USB, I could go higher.

2. The VPN rebooting issues. Did we ever get to the root of exactly why this happens? Let alone how to fix it. I remember one user mentioning it had to do with the sony DTV service, but I don't recall the details.

It is some crash deep down in the system in some MediaTek driver/service.

3. x264 10 bit, x265/HEVC, etc video playback. What is the situation here exactly? Should it handle x264 in 10 bit @ 1080p? I remember some chopping horribly. And does it actually have well functioning hardware decoding for x265? I remember some x265 @ 2160p being choppy, but others playing fine. Is there a difference between using Kodi or VLC as opposed to the sony player? Is there a difference between playing a file from a removable storage and streaming over LAN (granted that the transfer rate is stable in the latter)?

I am hardly playing exotic stuff. So I can't really comment. If your videos have properly been encoded with a supported profile/level, both H.264/AVC and H.265/HEVC should be fine, depending a lot on the used player which has to be well optimized in order to play high resolution/framerate video smoothly on the slow MediaTek SoC.

4. The 6.5603 update. I haven't gotten it, and on the support site it says that there's been a delay with launching it. Are you on this version number? Any improvements brought with it?

I tested 6.5603. Fixed nothing at all.

6. There are some issued on the ATV1 bug tracker on github but not the ATV2, like the frequent wakeups from deep sleep

Wakeup issue is there, see here.