Sony X9005A Owners & Netflix 4k/HEVC Codec

[sound10]

Hi as a current owner of the 2013 55X9005A, I am wondering what Sony is planning to do for us early adopters with regards to Netflix 4k/ HEVC H.265 Codec. I hope that we early adopters are not going to be left out in the cold !

Thanks

[pmclaughlin]

@Anonymous

The thing is. you don't have a valid reason to care either way. Yet you continue to run interference on the facts of the issue, helping to deny angry customers(like jostore28 and I) the ability to derive proper value from our £3,000 (or more investment) from Sony, by regurgitating the implausible non-sense.

If you must persist with the debate; despite admitting your lack of knowledge of opencl, opengl es, glsl, DSP and are making assertions from random unknown manufactures like Mede8er, then at least do the rest of us the courteous of being in the same boat, by buying the product so you don't just come across as a troll making excuses for them, that gets a kick out of others getting short changed.

When I tell you to go look at the Texas Instruments h.265 dsp board pdf I linked on the previous page it was to give you a completely unrealistic upper limit on how much programmable DSP they would need for h.265 decoding at 4K from a dedicated piece of hardware. That number is 160Gflops/s; or in other words is less than a PS3 and is roughly one third the amount that your laptop (GTX650m) GPU has in programmable OpenCl compute performance. So if it only takes 160Gflops/sec for decoding 4K h.265 as an upper limit, and the latest X9005B has double the performance of the X9005A(as stated by Kaz at CES2014), then what were they thinking putting just three (3*£30) Raspberry PI's (24Gflops) worth of compute performance in the X9005A? But then how on earth does that result in the TV drawing so much more power (Calibrated [Cinema 1] mode 125 watts) for picture processing compared to the 55” W955 model(Calibrated [Cinema 1] mode 35 watts)? Even generously accounting for the difference in speakers power, it is still like a 60watt black hole to explain what all that extra power is needed for in the X9005a.

At the less than amazing, efficiency per watt, of a 5watt Raspberry PI, that is (60/5 * 24) an extra 288Gflops of DSP more than the W-model at the conservative end, and probably more like an extra 500Gflops guestimating somewhere in the middle .

So tell me again how these TVs don't have enough programmable DSP to handle a 4k netflix h.265 stream?

/side note

The raspberry pi can decode a h.264 1080p60 video with hd audio in its tiny performance footprint using programmable Opengl ES acceleration.

[Jonnie1266]

Well, I am completely lost here with computing technology, I know a 'little' bit about power as I have an electrical back ground and work in a power station ! I think, if it is possible, for somebody to put an end to this - Quinnicus, can you involve a Sony engineer that can compete with pmclaughlin on this thread ? I believe at present there is a gaping void regarding Sony credability here that is in the best interests of the company to answer (talk about 'did we really land on the moon ?'). If my new pride and joy and favourite ornament in the living room really has the capability to decode the new codec then this would be an expensive travesty in the extreme. Bottom line is that clearly there was a race to get to the moon, 4K televisions should not have been made available to consumers until they were fit for purpose. Many many times whilst researching my purchase did I read how this unit was compatible for the future when 4K became available - I now notice that the price of this set has dropped dramatically within a very short space of time, maybe Sony (and others) could appease us sorry fools somehow for this faux pas. Crikey, I've just purchased the extended warranty aswell - at least it covers accidents (only joking) 

[pmclaughlin]

@Jonnie1266

I don't think that would help. I wouldn't want a Sony R&D Engineer to be put in the undesirable situation of constructing a technically false or misleading argument to try and backup the existing PR statements made by all the manufacturers and netflix, when they know first hand that it isn't a technical reason for the TVs failing to get a h.265 decoder update for netflix in 4K.

I think we are close to a stage where they'd sooner send a service engineer out, to service the tvs at the customer premises with software; or fit an updated board, so they could remain non-committal and vague on the technical issues, and appear consistent, so that it wasn't as easy as a trivial firmware update the user could install.

Personally, it is this type of situation that has lead to Sony's TV business(and other non Playstation hardware) failing to make money for a prolonged period of time for Sony.

Most people can probably appreciate the design and build quality of the hardware they produce, and will possibly consider pay more for it, than say for a rival product from Samsung, LG, Toshiba or Panasonic. But, given the pricing, customers typically feel let down, when that those highest premium products get a similarly brief (or shorter) amount of software support(typically 2years) as the cheaper rival product.

If Sony want to turn their TV business around, they need to look at how they reinvigorate the Playstation system software over many years(5 at least) on fixed hardware, and repeat this better way of business, with all their TVs and hardware(Cameras, handycams, amplifiers etc). It is always much cheaper to absorb the costs of supporting a customer's purchase beyond the point of sale, and exceed their expectations, than it is to disappoint them and automatically hand your competitors a new customer.

This has been the problem for Sony, even before the time that PS1 and PS2 success bankrolled many loss making hardware departments. “Great hardware, shame about the software support”.

[Nielsen]

Yes programmable DSP's would be nice, but I have yet to see any firmware upgrades covering codecs on Sony TV's, probably due to manufacturing cost is king.

However for a 3 grand+ TV I agree it's a disgrace this upgrade wasn't secured. I guess Sony gambled on some pre-h.265 fixed DSP, and later on some bits were flipped in the spec's.

And then on the other hand, as an early adopter, you are regarded as a conscious volunteer in this 4k gamble and hype

[pmclaughlin]

@Nielsen

What do you mean, “Would be nice”? It is all fully programmable in the X9005A, and this is just a cynical business decision.

The dead give away that the TVs are fully programmable is the Open Source copyright notifications, that lists all the unix file paths and the open source library names. All of these open source linux based notices wouldn't be there if the hardware was fixed path. As the copyright doesn't extend to hardware implementations; and not least, the 'software' libraries would have no programmable DSP to execute on.

They should realise that people with this type of money to buy such a product are well educated and know when they are being ripped off and being deceived. But as I said, it is their choice. I'd rather hand them £250 for a firmware update or a service engineer call out; as that will at least provide an integrated solution for the TV displaying 4K60p with deep colour support, rather than buy an unnecessary box that I don't have any spare hdmi ports for; and will result 8bit colour and will use more electric, and generate more heat. So I don't completely begrudge their need to make more money from giving us the feature. It is just the nonsense excuse, and them refusing to provide any environmentally conscious solutions to the problem they have created.

[Nielsen]

No, the dead give away is the part no. of the DSP in the back of your TV. Your business case suspicion doesn't add up in my head, and the smoke cover up looks to me like a classical design flaw that isn't firmware fixable.

Hanlons razor almost applies if you replace malice with greedy business:

"Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence."

Disclaimer : This isn't in any way a encouragement to disassemble any equipment.

[pmclaughlin]

@Nielsen

It isn't a suspicion. It is fact based. We are not discussing some £20 part to decode broadcast TV like a DVB-T tuner. We are discussing the £400+ cost part of the TV, that they will still be reprogramming and tweaking in the days and weeks leading up to the reveal of a new headline product at a CES show.

The X9005A has a fully programmable DSP board that can easily be retasked to decode h.265 data by skilled staff. The only problem might be, that the skilled staff part might not be available in Sony if the W9's netflix problems thread is anything to go by.

But please stop trying to give them an incompetence hardware design excuse for them screwing over premium customers. Clearly the luxury hardware design is made by world class engineers, and it is the software support that is the problem.

[pmclaughlin]

Well after finally realising the risk of failing to actually test hdcp 2.2 4K content on our TV while it is in its first year of warranty, and gave in, and decided to buy the fmp-x5 @£350(for device that low and behold only uses a tiny 37watts to decode h.265, no surprises there then?), you then find out that the device is out of stock(07th sept 2014).

http://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/televisions-remotes-selectors-cameras/fmp-x5/specifications

Now, that wouldn't be a problem if it was available from any other retailer, which it isn't, or if it was even a device that was used by other TVs, but I'm now starting to get concerned that the only proof I've got that the TV supports hdcp 2.2 is a Sony 4k activation website(that after using has disable the service code in our system information screen on the TV), and with the FMP-X5 being redundant as of the release of the X9005B, we could end up with a TV that doesn't support 4K content even with a h.265 decoder attached, and no option to buy a device to check it, before Sony move everything on.

I even used my LGA2011/Kepler PC to output at 4K50 or 60p over dvi-hdmi and then tried netflix, and still the PC app only supported super HD, despite 4K hdcp, 4K screen and 4K60p resolution.

How many bloody hoops do they expect highly technical customers to jump through to actual experience 4K on a 4K advertised TV? Why did they even bother with 4K products if this is their bumbling top-brass strategy.

Surely the cheapest and most logical solution to all this nonsense is to just fix the TV firmware and refund the few people that bought an FMP-X5. Or atleast update the firmware in the PS4/PS3 to support netflix in 4K, so people at least have some optio

[frbrosz]

Hello

first i am sorry for my english (french inside).

I am quiet disapointed by this product since I have discovered the x9005a will not support netflix 4k services.

I have recently contacted the french customer service and they replied thant only the 2014 products will support netflix, not even mentionning the 4K.

Honestly I think I can live without the 4K... but my fidelity to the sony brand just evaporated. Their products have a great design and the image quality is for me one of the best I saw but they fail to offer to their customer a long term rich experience.

[reggiedunlop]

Does anyone know if this problem can be solved with a hardware upgrade?

For instance, would a board from the 9005B model be compatible?

Otherwise I would wait for a third party external box that would support Netflix and Amazon, and whatever else is available at the time of release...