Serviio

Posted: **Mon Oct 12, 2020 10:52 pm**

I recently bought a Sony XBR65X900H, which appears to be a pretty popular TV (partly due to HDMI 2.1 support). It's running Android and connects fine to Serviio. The Sony TV shows up as "MediaRenderer" in Serviio and is assigned the "Generic DLNA profile".
Most files play ok, but newer high bitrate files not so great as there is a lot of stuttering.
The closest profile match I see is for Sony Bravia TV's from 2013/2014, but that seems to do worse than the generic profile.

What profile would you recommend using? Has anyone maybe made a profile for newer Sony TV's?

A few examples of files that stutters a lot. They play ok for a couple of seconds, then halts for a bit, and so on. The output is from ffmpeg 4.2.3...

Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'SeaLion.mp4':
Metadata:
major_brand : mp42
minor_version : 0
compatible_brands: isommp42
creation_time : 2020-08-12T18:50:21.000000Z
location : +33.9730-118.4497/
location-eng : +33.9730-118.4497/
com.android.version: 10
com.android.capture.fps: 60.000000
Duration: 00:00:57.13, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 72277 kb/s
Stream #0:0(eng): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p(tv, bt709), 3840x2160, 72018 kb/s, SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9, 59.94 fps, 60 tbr, 90k tbn, 180k tbc (default)
Metadata:
creation_time : 2020-08-12T18:50:21.000000Z
handler_name : VideoHandle
Stream #0:1(eng): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 256 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
creation_time : 2020-08-12T18:50:21.000000Z
handler_name : SoundHandle

Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'Clippers.MP4':
Metadata:
major_brand : XAVC
minor_version : 16785407
compatible_brands: XAVCmp42iso2
creation_time : 2020-01-11T03:44:02.000000Z
Duration: 00:02:27.15, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 51995 kb/s
Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p(tv, bt709/bt709/iec61966-2-4), 1920x1080 [SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9], 49952 kb/s, 59.94 fps, 59.94 tbr, 60k tbn, 119.88 tbc (default)
Metadata:
creation_time : 2020-01-11T03:44:02.000000Z
handler_name : Video Media Handler
encoder : AVC Coding
Stream #0:1(und): Audio: pcm_s16be (twos / 0x736F7774), 48000 Hz, stereo, s16, 1536 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
creation_time : 2020-01-11T03:44:02.000000Z
handler_name : Sound Media Handler
Stream #0:2(und): Data: none (rtmd / 0x646D7472), 491 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
creation_time : 2020-01-11T03:44:02.000000Z
handler_name : Timed Metadata Media Handler
timecode : 00:29:14:18

Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'Lemonade.mp4':
Metadata:
major_brand : isom
minor_version : 512
compatible_brands: isomiso2avc1mp41
encoder : Lavf57.25.100
Duration: 00:01:29.40, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 151745 kb/s
Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (Main) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p(tv, bt709/bt709/unknown), 2560x1440, 151542 kb/s, SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9, 60 fps, 60 tbr, 15360 tbn, 120 tbc (default)
Metadata:
handler_name : VideoHandler
Stream #0:1(und): Audio: aac (LC) (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 48000 Hz, stereo, fltp, 196 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
handler_name : SoundHandler

Posted: **Tue Oct 13, 2020 2:13 pm**

I think you're seeing the stuttering/buffering for those files because their bitrate is potentially exceeding Fast Ethernet speeds. Particularly the last one (Lemonade), which is reporting a bitrate of 151542 kb/s. That's 151 Mbps, which is over 50% higher than a Fast Ethernet connection. You would need a Gigabit network to support that, and using 802.11ac WiFi would likely be able to handle it. The question is though, can the TV itself handle that bitrate? I would expect so, but don't honestly have any idea. The other titles you list don't show a bitrate over 100 Mbps, but they might have peak rates that do exceed it.

I don't believe anyone has created a new Sony profile for some time. I don't have any Sony TVs, so I'm not a good one to try. The problem becomes identifying the high bit rate files for transcoding, since they are all in a supported format you can't just identify them by container or codec. And your Serviio computer will need to have a reasonable amount of power to transcode them on the fly. You can't even say to capture the files that have a resolution higher than 1920x1080, as you have one there that is still buffering at 1080.

Depending on the number of videos that are troublesome, it might be worthwhile to run them through something like Handbrake and limit the bit rate. Maybe just try it with one and see if that resolves the issue before committing the time necessary to do them all.

Posted: **Fri Oct 16, 2020 12:24 am**

Wow, I had no idea that any brand new TV only have a 100Mbit Ethernet port, but a quick search tells me that there are more people than me that are surprised and unhappy about that. Seems like an odd thing, but maybe Sony decided on that because it doesn't support high bitrate 100+Mbps streams anyway. Knowing that, like you said, it's no surprise that the 151Mbps Lemonade stream doesn't work. That's a stream my son rendered, and I realize that it's not common with such high bitrate.

I would expect the other two streams to work, 72 resp. 50Mbps, but I guess there might be some silly decoding limitation. I haven't done a huge amount of testing, but so far it seems like "bitrate" is the factor that differentiate what works and what doesn't work. We have plenty of other ways to view the streams, so I won't bother re-encode what doesn't work, but will continue to fiddle around a bit. Let's hope a future firmware/Android-update will just fix it.

Posted: **Fri Oct 16, 2020 2:05 pm**

Yeah, that's why I have a couple of Nvidia Shield players. They have Gigabit Ethernet, and play all my UHD rips without a problem.

It's not just the TVs that still only have Fast Ethernet. Roku devices and Fire TV devices are the same, and most generic Android streaming boxes are also 100 Mbps only. In reality there aren't many media devices that have Gigabit.

Posted: **Sun Oct 18, 2020 8:02 am**

I tested the above clips with my Sony UBP-X800M2 Blu-Ray player, which I had previously not used with Serviio. It couldn't play the 100Mbps+ Lemonade clip, but it played the other two clips fine. I guess Sony's Blu-ray players is a bit more powerful than their TV's; maybe due to some bloated OS

Serviio

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