Sony KD-A8 / A85 / A8H 2020 Model
#16
(2021-02-08, 18:17)HereIsTom Wrote:
(2021-02-08, 15:26)noggin Wrote:
(2021-02-08, 13:38)HereIsTom Wrote: It is working all fine on the latest Sony Android TV’s.
Also HD audio is working fine on TV and passthrough with Kodi on it.

I guess frame rate switching only works in Kodi - not Neflix, Prime etc. - as I don't think they've rewritten their Android TV apps to do it?

On my Sony Android TV the only apps that work correctly with 50Hz content are the HbbTV ones.

I don’t use Netflix, Prime etc. only Kodi and that is working fine on the Sony TV.
Ah - I wonder which model range introduced frame rate switching to the Sony Android TV implementation - be useful to know.

(I know a lot of people who use MotionFlow won't see the issue - but once you disable it, it's really clear to see which sets do and don't support it, particularly if you are sensitive to 3:2, or are watching 50Hz Live TV at 60Hz)
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#17
Do you actually see different refresh rates enumerated in the Kodi settings menu?  Under Settings->System->Display, are you able to select different resolutions and refresh rates or is it locked to Android default video mode?  If only 60Hz mode shows up as available, then it's unlikely you're getting refresh rate switching.
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#18
I still have Kodi 18.9 on my Sony 55A89 and is working great.
Are there any here who already have Kodi 19 installed on their Sony A8 TV?
Kodi Mediaplayer; Sony KD-55A89 4K Android TV
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#19
Hello all,
I have a Sony KD65 A89 and I'm running Kodi 19.0 on it.
Contrary to what other have said, audio passthrough to my Samsung soundbar is working fine for me, with all the audio formats I tried, although I didn't have tried any lossless audio passthrough. It sounds strange to me that, although having eARC support, I couldn't passthrough lossless audio though...
Auto frame rate switching unfortunately does not work on this TV and this is really a pity.
Switching from Kodi 18.9 to 19.0 I didn't notice huge annoyances, apart from an old anime in h264 format that started to give me seek problems when fast forwarding at more than 4x: with Kodi 18.9 it worked fine, with 19.0 seek is broken at >4x speeds or when jumping forward/backward. By now, it happens only on that single video series, I don't know what is wrong with that.

Another AVI using XviD codec plays really bad and makes audio go out-of-sync: the video stutters a lot. I can fix the video stuttering by disabling hardware acceleration in Kodi, but in this case video quality (for any contents I try) is much much worse. The same video plays fine in VLC, with no stuttering at all and decent video quality. This applied to both 18.9 and 19.0.

But the main problem I have is related to buffering and I don't think it's Kodi 19.0 specific, I'm pretty sure it was the same on 18.9, but I didn't use Kodi so much to state for sure. I think I'll open a dedicated thread to try to diagnose this. This TV has just a 100 Mbit/s ethernet card, but it must not be a bandwidth problem at all, but rather a Kodi-specific problem, because the same contents with VLC plays just fine. I will provide more details on the dedicated thread.

After all, using Kodi as an internal app for this TV is not a great experience: the interface is fast and snappy, but the mentioned issues hurt a lot. In general, I would say that Kodi works much better on a €20 FireTV Stick, although the UI is a lot slower on that device.
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#20
(2021-04-05, 18:44)mauromol Wrote: After all, using Kodi as an internal app for this TV is not a great experience: the interface is fast and snappy, but the mentioned issues hurt a lot. In general, I would say that Kodi works much better on a €20 FireTV Stick, although the UI is a lot slower on that device.

I disagree, Kodi on the Sony A89 is a great experience, it's fast and hassle free here and really works a lot better than on a FireTV stick.
I have connected the TV with an ethernet cable and the 100Mbit is fast enough.
Stuttering with certain files I had with Kodi on the FireTV stick and another box also bothered, so it is not the TV.
We think it is a great experience to watch a film or series with the Sony A89.
Kodi Mediaplayer; Sony KD-55A89 4K Android TV
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#21
(2021-04-05, 19:28)HereIsTom Wrote:
(2021-04-05, 18:44)mauromol Wrote: After all, using Kodi as an internal app for this TV is not a great experience: the interface is fast and snappy, but the mentioned issues hurt a lot. In general, I would say that Kodi works much better on a €20 FireTV Stick, although the UI is a lot slower on that device.

I disagree, Kodi on the Sony A89 is a great experience, it's fast and hassle free here and really works a lot better than on a FireTV stick.
I have connected the TV with an ethernet cable and the 100Mbit is fast enough.
Stuttering with certain files I had with Kodi on the FireTV stick and another box also bothered, so it is not the TV.
We think it is a great experience to watch a film or series with the Sony A89.
Glad to know it works well for you, fact is that all the problems I mentioned don't exist when playing the same contents with Kodi from the same source on the FireTV Stick (even though using a WiFi connection, while the Sony TV is using a cable connection...). Also, frame rate change works on the FireTV Stick while it does not work on this Sony TV, and this is an objective actual limit. As a final note, the same contents with VLC on the same Sony TV play perfectly fine, while they does not in Kodi.
The only things where the A89 works objectively better than the FireTV Stick for me with Kodi is in UI responsiveness, startup time and library refresh time.

Maybe I'm just unlucky...
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#22
(2021-04-05, 19:28)HereIsTom Wrote:
(2021-04-05, 18:44)mauromol Wrote: After all, using Kodi as an internal app for this TV is not a great experience: the interface is fast and snappy, but the mentioned issues hurt a lot. In general, I would say that Kodi works much better on a €20 FireTV Stick, although the UI is a lot slower on that device.

I disagree, Kodi on the Sony A89 is a great experience, it's fast and hassle free here and really works a lot better than on a FireTV stick.
I have connected the TV with an ethernet cable and the 100Mbit is fast enough.
Stuttering with certain files I had with Kodi on the FireTV stick and another box also bothered, so it is not the TV.
We think it is a great experience to watch a film or series with the Sony A89.

Does this Sony TV finally have frame rate switching in Android TV?  The big limitation of Sony Android TV apps has been that they all run at a fixed 59.94 or 60Hz refresh rate - meaning 25/50Hz content is a juddery mess.  Does Kodi now let you whitelist resolutions and frame rates correctly on this model - rather than just offering a fixed, single, refresh rate?
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#23
(2021-04-07, 10:20)noggin Wrote: Does this Sony TV finally have frame rate switching in Android TV?  The big limitation of Sony Android TV apps has been that they all run at a fixed 59.94 or 60Hz refresh rate - meaning 25/50Hz content is a juddery mess.  Does Kodi now let you whitelist resolutions and frame rates correctly on this model - rather than just offering a fixed, single, refresh rate?

No, as I said frame rate switching does not work for me, although the option is checked in Kodi settings. I verified it showing debug info during playback: a 25 fps video is played with the output being at 60 Hz.
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#24
I must add that the result is not a "juddery mess", because the TV does a great job and motion is smooth (I am very sensible to this aspect - please note I use the Motion Flow feature), but a working frame rate switching would certainly be better.
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#25
(2021-04-07, 10:20)noggin Wrote:
(2021-04-05, 19:28)HereIsTom Wrote:
(2021-04-05, 18:44)mauromol Wrote:  
Does this Sony TV finally have frame rate switching in Android TV?  The big limitation of Sony Android TV apps has been that they all run at a fixed 59.94 or 60Hz refresh rate - meaning 25/50Hz content is a juddery mess.  Does Kodi now let you whitelist resolutions and frame rates correctly on this model - rather than just offering a fixed, single, refresh rate?

No idea, but everything here plays well on the TV, also with Kodi.
Kodi Mediaplayer; Sony KD-55A89 4K Android TV
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#26
(2021-04-07, 10:41)mauromol Wrote: I must add that the result is not a "juddery mess", because the TV does a great job and motion is smooth (I am very sensible to this aspect - please note I use the Motion Flow feature), but a working frame rate switching would certainly be better.

Ah - MotionFlow hides a multitude of sins, and adds a huge number of its own artefacts.

I disable all motion interpolation on my home TVs - after all, you don't see it as a feature on monitors in control rooms - where I spend my daytime hours, and where I'm required to notice motion artefacts as part of my job. I want my TV to be as close to a control room display as possible.  

If you're happy with Kodi and MotionFlow - that's great for you.  There are quite a few of us who find the MotionFlow algorithm's motion interpolation artefacts distracting - so we disable it. I've seen it fall apart too often to leave it on for more than the few minutes I look at itwhen I get a new TV to see if it's improved much.  It's particularly bad on stuff with compression artefacts - as they confuse it more.
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#27
(2021-04-07, 16:56)noggin Wrote: If you're happy with Kodi and MotionFlow - that's great for you.  There are quite a few of us who find the MotionFlow algorithm's motion interpolation artefacts distracting - so we disable it. I've seen it fall apart too often to leave it on for more than the few minutes I look at itwhen I get a new TV to see if it's improved much.  It's particularly bad on stuff with compression artefacts - as they confuse it more.

Just a clarification: I didn't mean to say that Motion Flow is REQUIRED for proper Kodi playback without frame rate switching. After all, motion compensation and frame rate conversions are two different things, I just wanted to say that motion seems to be smooth for me even without frame rate switching, perhaps also due to my use of Motion Flow. Please let's leave the usual flame war regarding frame interpolation yes/no out of scope.
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#28
(2021-04-07, 19:07)mauromol Wrote: After all, motion compensation and frame rate conversions are two different things, I just wanted to say that motion seems to be smooth for me even without frame rate switching, perhaps also due to my use of Motion Flow. Please let's leave the usual flame war regarding frame interpolation yes/no out of scope.

Yes and No. Decent Frame Rate conversion solutions (as used to convert between 50 and 60Hz content for broadcast frame rate conversion) usually use motion compensation with some form of vector-based motion tracking (either using block-matching or Phase Correlation assisted Block-matching - these are devices like the GVG - previously Snell - Alchemist PhC or the For.A FRC-8000 etc.).

The vector tracking is to allow for motion compensation to be used in the frame rate conversion - you basically analyse the source frames at their native frame rate, track moving picture elements and find out their motion vectors, and use this information to interpolate the new frames, using motion compensation (rather than just weighted linear blending between frames).  

Frame rate conversion (other than integer-based frame repetition) without block or pixel-based motion detection & compensation usually falls back to crude motion-adaptive stuff which really doesn't look great - using different amounts of blending between fields and lines adaptively, based on motion. (80s-style 4-field 4-line adaptive stuff uses that - as do cheap frame rate converters in use today), and then in its most crude form, without motion adaption, frame rate conversion usually just frame drops/frame repeats (which is usually what happens on Kodi platforms when content is output at a non-native, or non-integer multiple of native, refresh rate)

Motion Flow is a form of frame rate conversion - it's converting the input frame rate of the video it receives to a new frame rate (from 24, 25, 50, 60Hz etc.) to a new frame rate (50, 60, 100, 120Hz usually). It does that using algorithms that - I believe - use motion compensation to improve the interpolation.

The issue with 25/50Hz content played at 60Hz in Kodi is that the frame repetition approach is used (50Hz stuff usually gets converted to 60Hz by repeating every 5th frame - giving you 10Hz judder) and because MotionFlow is optimised to frame rate convert real-world motion - not real-world motion with added 10Hz frame-repetition motion artefacts, it smooths things out but has even less of a chance than normal to get things right. The MotionFlow algorithm can improve this - but look at any smooth linear motion (Say a lower third scrolling ticker on a news channel properly deinterlaced to 50Hz) and you see it can't remove the artefacts fully.

Effectively you are doing two frame rate conversions back to back - one in Kodi, and one in MotionFlow.

This isn't a MotionFlow flame war - I'm more than happy for others to use MotionFlow (I'm aware that I'm sensitive to the artefacts that the processing introduces, and others aren't) - but I think it's important to acknowledge where devices like Sony TVs still have limitations (and not playing back content frame-rate matched is a real limitation for many of us). MotionFlow may mask these, or mitigate them a bit, but the only real way to remove them is for them not to be there in the first place.
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Sony KD-A8 / A85 / A8H 2020 Model0