How really slow is Android TV?!?

[rooobb]

I was really so sick about reading complain about "how bad is Android TV" and as matter of fact "how sloooow is it" that I decided to spend few minutes to record the main operation done on my TV (or at least the ones I use more): I don't feel they are so sllw at all!

I would like that someone could make the same recording with a different TV set just to compare how much Tizen, WebOS or Firefox are really Faster.

Please do not blame the image quality of my TV: I did not spent time setting correctly the camera (a Sony CX280 obviously ) so the autofocus was not able to adapt rapidly to the different lights on TV at each moment. I can assure image quality is really wonderful!!

Updated on Oct 2nd 2019: Oreo version

[rooobb]

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@Kuschelmonschter  ha scritto:

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@rooobb  schrieb:

or maybe my daughter did  

in any case with my average use is more than one week

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BRAVIAs do reboot in standby every now and then. I don't know whether it crashes during one of the tens of wakeups at night or whether those reboots are forced to mask long-term issues.

Do not really know. I had some loss of powers in the house so the statistics are not valid. I'll check it eventually

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I thought about it for a long time and I had to find the time to do it, but in the end I did it trying to replicate the same use cases but using Android TV Oreo. Below the result.

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I still think it is biased in some ways...

• You are starting YouTube from the background (at least you state that it has been preloaded). I use quite some apps (Netflix, Prime Video, Zattoo, Kodi, YouTube,...) and most of the time, when switching to another app after some time, it starts from scratch as it has been killed in the background due to RAM shortage (or because the TV has rebooted in standby). So most of the time you have to wait 15s for YouTube to load. At least Prime Video shows a full boot (~10s) as it cannot be backgrounded at all.

Yes youtube was run some 10 minutes before and was already loaded skipping the starting time (not 15 sec, but it take time in any case). Prime Video was never enabled to remain in memory AFAIK while for other apps (kodi, Spotify - BTW only on Android TV I experienced the possibility to have it without a premium account, Video, Nova Player) most of the time remain in the background. I cannot state how many of them are killed and after how much time

• You are only showing a short cutout of 2160p60 playback within YouTube. If you let it run a bit longer you will certainly see the dropped frames counting up, especially when navigation menus which is quite laggy while playing 2160p60. There is also frequent microstuttering (VSync issue) which however isn't something one can judge from the video as display and camera are obviously not in sync anyway.

I've tried 4k HDR 60 fps for longer and, in my experience it gets smoother after some times not the opposite. If you look at the statistics there where 18 frame skipped at the beginning of the streaming and it  doesn't skip more continuing the view or loading an other video. Your are right in the camera shoot there are microstuttering probably due to the camera recording at 30fps and not aligned with the screen refreshing frequence but I didn't see it in real life

I do agree however that things improved quite a bit with Oreo. Sony removed quite some bloat. Prime Video is finally usable and also 2160p60 playback in YouTube has improved quite a bit even though it is still not as good as it used to be with YouTube 1.0.

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i had a1,2 months now i have the af9,i buying sony tvs from 2005,this is the first time i saw perfomance update,its really fast,no bugs,no no reboots no nothing ,its really worth the money,on i have always 1500 mb ram free

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Performance-wise it's gotta be better, I give you that. But it is still a friggin MediaTek chip. Still suffers from a dozen of wakeups per hour, passthrough via eARC is broken as hell, VPN still causes crashing...

I cannot judge on the issue you highlight not using eARC (ARC is working flawlessly now) nor VPN. In general operation what I notice is that it is somewhat faster (not exceptionally so but enough to be enjoyable) but more consistent throughout the usage needing less and less restart. I didn't analyze the wakeups but apart for power consumption it does not bring (if it happens) any problem to me at the moment. BTW your memory usage is consistent with the one I saw on my own KD55A1 having in general some 500 MB free (out of the 1.5GB available to Android of the 2GB total RAM - compared to 3GB you should have on AF9). AF9 should be a good step forward compared to my A1 (said that I'm in love with this kind of design), but I have to say that A1 IMHO has a better construction, in particular the back glass finish (ok not that one is everyday looking at the back of the TV ).

A final thought: what do you think about having an OLED now? I cannot watch an LCD anymore...

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[Kuschelmonschter]

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@rooobb  schrieb:

I've tried 4k HDR 60 fps for longer and, in my experience it gets smoother after some times not the opposite. If you look at the statistics there where 18 frame skipped at the beginning of the streaming and it  doesn't skip more continuing the view or loading an other video.

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Here is how I experience 2160p60 playback in YouTube on ATV2...

There is some micro-stuttering which especially becomes obvious in panning shots. It is indeed more dramatic in the beginning. I assume that it is due to the app filling up buffers at full speed. Downloading data uses quite some CPU which might hurt timings at the renderer. It becomes less after some time but is still apparent every few seconds. Micro-stuttering is not the result of frame drops but of missing VSync cycles.

There is quite some input lag when playing 2160p60 content, meaning that there is some delay from the time a button is pressed until the respective action is executed. For example press OK or up/down and navigate the OSD. Do the same at 1080p and you'll recognize the difference.

Also while navigation the OSD, lots of frames get dropped. I did a small video (see here). Check out the frame drop counter in the nerd stats. It is hard to judge input lag from the video as you can't see me pressing the buttons. But you can still see that there is less frame dropping and faster OSD navigation while playback is still at 1440p60.

[rooobb]

For microstuttering I didn't notice it, I'll try checking better (BTW I'm able to notice it in the camera shooting, but it is not present - or not so evident - in real viewing)

For navigation, in my own video you can see me navigating in the app (and you can check the remote click that is quite load being near the camera) and there is no frame skipped nor delay. It may happens when calling the image setup instead that probably is more CPU intensive.

Do not know if some hw characteristic of the A1 (the extreme processor ?) may influence also the mediatek load...

[Kuschelmonschter]

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@rooobb  schrieb:

For navigation, in my own video you can see me navigating in the app (and you can check the remote click that is quite load being near the camera) and there is no frame skipped nor delay.

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There is clearly a delay in your video. Player controls are not as quickly skipped as you press the left/right buttons. Try at 1080p and at 2160p and you will recognize a difference.

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@rooobb  schrieb:

and there is no frame skipped nor delay.

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Bring up nerd stats first, wait until playback has reached 2160p60 and then navigate the OSD... like I did in my video...

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@rooobb  schrieb:

Do not know if some hw characteristic of the A1 (the extreme processor ?) may influence also the mediatek load...

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Don't think so. I am using an XF90 here which also has the X1 Extreme. It is all up to the application processor which is a MediaTek MT5891 in both cases. I also performed a factory reset yesterday. YouTube app version is at 2.07.02 from July.

[rooobb]

I was sure I recorded also navigation on youtube, I'll redo it and let you know if pressing button on the remote will show frame lost.

Regarding stuttering on video, trying to look on the internet on how to recognize it I saw that it may also depend on network latency... may it be a cause for different behaviour? Even if I understand correctly it should lead to frame lost not tearing or stuttering ...

[Kuschelmonschter]

Network latency is not an issue. Buffers are sufficiently filled at any time. Buffer health tells me that there are always 9-11 seconds of video available inside buffers. So the app always has enough data to decode and render video in real-time.

I do get 120mbps at the TV via 802.11ac (checked via fast.com in Vewd browser) and according to nerd stats, bandwidth to YouTube servers is at 75mbps which is plenty for YouTube 2160p60.

Just carefully watch the whole The World in HDR clip, especially the panning parts. I watched it several times and there have always been several stutters in those.

[Kuschelmonschter]

A difference however might be that I am using Wi-Fi instead of LAN. Maybe I can try using LAN too...

[Kuschelmonschter]

Ok, switched to LAN. Throughput via fast.com is now at 96mbps. Behavior is pretty much the same.

[rooobb]

That could be a difference even though using my powerline I am capped at 100 mbps by the ethernet interface of the tv

[Kuschelmonschter]

LAN didn't make a difference.