I bought a Sony Bravia XBR65X900F and I see that if I try to play a 4k movie from Plex through the TV’s Android TV interface, I’m seeing something unexpected:
a) it doesn’t seem to be using the same Plex client as my Shield TV (the pause screen on the Shield TV indicates if transcoding is happening and why, but on the Sony it doesn’t). Should these two devices not be using the same client, since they are both “Android TV”?
b) For a 4K/HDR movie (HEVC+TrueHD), the Sony is clearly not direct playing or direct streaming (ie: horrible playback), but the Shield TV does a total Direct Play for the same stream. I would have expected the TV to be able to DirectPlay this type of content. No? It would be convenient if it could, but if it can’t I’m happy to continue using the Shield TV but I was hoping to eliminate a device here and just use the TV.
Playback information need to be enabled in the client settings. You probably did this on the Shield but not yet on your TV.
The playback capabilities of a device aren’t determined by the OS (Android TV) alone. If the tv doesn’t support those streams for direct play (or doesn’t make that capability available to apps, you’re out of luck. I used to have similar issues with my Sony when the native Videos app played things directly via DLNA while it made the Plex client transcode those videos.
As for your expectation for the 2 devices to act all the same… with Android TV it’s basically as with Android in general. The OS provides some core functionality but you’ll always depend on the device vendor to (a) integrate the device capabilities and enable Android to use them, and (b) to actually provide a halfway recent version of Android. From what I understand, NVIDIA is doing a more decent job when it comes to this compared to SONY (at least with regards to the latter).
@tom80H Do you know where in the settings? I had thought that might the the case, but when I looked last night I didn’t see a setting for that (but I did see all the other usual settings like allow passthrough and such). I’ll take a second look.
Regarding the Android version, that is a good point – I don’t actually know what version of Android the Sony has at the moment (but I know how to check) so it could well be behind. I seem to recall the first tile in the Smart TV apps section was a notice that Sony was in the process of rolling out a “major update” at the end of 2018 and start of 2019. It said it was a staged rollout, so I might not have it. I’ll have to dig into that and see if I can force an update or if I just need to sit and wait.
The playback capabilities of the device itself are another unknown, and I agree that it might just not be exposing the capabilities it has to the app. I think I just need to find that setting so I can see why Plex thinks it has to transcode the video. I’ll also try the built-in app (as soon as I find it) to see how it does with DLNA.
Like I said, the Shield TV works just fine so its not urgent – it just struck me as odd and it would really be nice to not hve to keep the Shield TV in the device chain (have to free up those precious, precious high speed HDMI ports of which there are only 2).
I have an x900f and a shield. The tv is on nougat and the shield is on oreo.
Last year’s E series tvs have a beta oreo firmware available, but the current ones don’t yet.
My tv will directplay fine (when it plays at all - all android clients are screwed for me and won’t play mp4 hevc ac3 files but Plex won’t fix it).
Obviously you can’t be on 2.5ghz wifi trying to directplay 4k video. Even 5ghz would be sketchy to me. It’s best to hard wire.
The Plex apps should be the same, though the shield also supports a Plex server, so maybe not 100% identical.
Also, all 4 hdmi ports support 4k @ 30fps, with 2 supporting 4k @ 60fps. I would use ports 2/3 for game consoles first. A shield, or other video box would be fine on either of the other ports with 4:2:2 or 4:2:0 chroma subsampling, but your mileage may vary so test it yourself (i had to put my xbox one directly on my tv cuz my soundbar didn’t passthrough dolby vision for example).
Also make sure to hit the google movies & tv app. Sony is giving away 2 free 4k movies for buying their tvs.
I am using wired networking, yes, but that is certainly a good point.
Regarding the update to Oreo, it looks like Sony says they started rolling it out in November and will continue “in the new year”. The Sony support site lets you download firmware, but they didn’t post the updated firmware yet. Unfortunate, but oh well.
I didn’t consider the container that my video was in, but it is an MKV after checking. I’ll turn on the video details setting that has been pointed out and hopefully that will tell me why it wants to transcode.
an other thing to remember is the shield (still) has a relatively very powerful gpu and mainboard chips.
and nvidia has gone to great lengths to make the shield work with a huge number of media files and codecs.
smart tvs are not known for including very powerful cpu or gpu-wise.
nor are they known for being kept up to date past the first year or 2 if you’re lucky.
I feel even as 2019 comes around with new tvs and hdmi 2.1 with e-arc, that we will still not get as good experience with the tv’s as shield has provided for as long as it has.
Long story short, I would not expect any smart tv experience or performance to surpass the shield, any time soon.
Oh, I’ll be waiting for the OTA update for sure. These staged rollouts make sense, and frankly I’ve irritated my wife enough with TV stuff lately. At least if I wait I can blame Sony for why the entire interface is changing.
I too have a 900f and it was updated via Sony download site. Even after the update, plex (Kodi and MrMC will not either on a wired Ethernet connect) will still not play any 4K content from my nas as my shield will. All it does is buffer and stutter. No problem playing any non 4K content.
