Playback Issue Sony Bravia XE93 under Plex

[RobMetal]

Ich möchte einmal auf den längeren Forenbeitrag bei Plex hinweisen.

https://forums.plex.tv/t/playback-issue-sony-bravia-930e-flashing-artifacts-at-bottom-of-screen/2308...

Ich selber bin von dem Problem betroffen und es nervt!

Kurzum: Unter der Plex App kommt es zu massiven Bildflackern am unteren Bildschirmrand (genau über der schwarzen 16:9 Balkenbegrenzung)

Dieser Fehler (steht auch so im Forum) tritt nur unter Plex, abgespielt pre Synology Netzwerk HDD auf.

Liegt der Fehler hier bei Plex oder Sony?

[Darkrenzo]

Sure  @Peter_S.,

My Plex is a PC server running the current version 1.13.8.5395 with no server hardware.
My TV's Plex app is currently running the current version 7.7.0.7567.
My TV model is KD-65X9300E and the firmware is September's version PKG6.5629.0177PAA.

Nvidia Shield is running the exact same Android TV Plex App with the exact same number and I just spent the last half of the hour Sony TV and then on the Nvidia Shield, and all of them showed no green line on the shield at all
. An issue that
they fix and no longer occur on the shield.
This was taken from a comment made by at Nvidia customer service agent When the issue what being posted about In Their forums -
" The green line issue which reported here, debugged and fixed and the fix will be included in our next release The issue what. specific to 1080p constant and only on some 1080p TVs related to the 1088 scanlines of 1080p and those last 8 lines ended up green. "
This fix was indeed published in their 7.0 release and fixed the problem.

So in my research all the complaints I've come to buy 2017/2018 tv's.
The ones I see are my X930E, the X940E, the A1, the ZD9 series, the KD65Z9D and the new X900F (well maybe not so new).
Peter are you using the files?

[Peter_S.]

Hi Darkrenzo,

I'm using a TV from XD series - however, in principle it runs the same firmware and uses an equal chassis.

https://www.sony.co.uk/electronics/support/lcd-tvs-android-xd80xx_x80xxd-series/kd-49xd8005/download...

Also I'm using the latest version of PLEX server and PLEX client on my PC and TV - so it's really weird that you can see the issue but I can't.

I will ask the technicians again to check the issue on their side.

Cheers

Peter

[Darkrenzo]

@Peter_S.

Something to maybe look at...
I just googled all the TV's models that people have said they have had this problem with and they all have one thing in common that I think your XD80 does not... They are all have the X1 Extreme Processor.
That might be some common ground to work from.

Also when I do a search for my firmware and a search for the XD80's firmware, I cannot see my tv in the XD80's 'applicable models' lists, so I think we may have different firmware running.
But that could also be an error on my part due to model numbers changing from country to country.

[Peter_S.]

Hi darkrenzo,

Regarding software: Maybe it's different in Australia. Here in Europe all the series share the same software (see link in my previous post). Anyway, naming conventions are a bit different.

Thanks a lot for pointing to the X1 Extreme processor. I'll share this with the technicians as well.

Cheers

Peter

[Darkrenzo]

@Peter_S.

Ahhh. So I would assume then, that in your area my KD-65X9300E TV would be the KD-65XE9305?

I really dont get why the have to have different naming conventions, but I am sure they are in place for a reason.

Happy to help. I would really like this issue solved, so I am happy to render whatever assistance I can.

[Kuschelmonschter]

I now tried those samples too. And I can confirm the green line on a KD-65XF9005 with X1 Extreme.

Plex 7.6.2.7169 on Sony BRAVIA KD-65XF9005 (ATV2 / X1 Extreme)

Plex Media Server 1.13.5.5291 on QNAP NAS

The same samples play fine inside Kodi on the TV.

[Peter_S.]

Hi KM,

Thanks a lot for confirming.

What I find interesting is the fact that it plays OK via Kodi.

In this case I would assume that the issue is within the PLEX app.

Anyway, it's escalated to the technicians and I hope that they will look into this soon.

Cheers

Peter

[Kuschelmonschter]

I am also not sure who is to blame here. There are multiple points of failure with the first one being the encoder which I think introduces the issue. Those samples are clearly transcoded BD rips with black bars being cropped away (1920x800). All my personal Blu-ray rips on my NAS are in original H.264 1080p (with encoded black bars) and play perfectly fine.

Other points where this can be fixed are the decoder, video renderer and post-processor. Post-processor (X1 *whatever*) might not be the best place to do it as it has no knowledge about whether overscan is used or not (or only by analyzing the image). Probably the HW decoder should do it or the encoder shouldn't introduce overscan in the first place...

[RobMetal]

Ich benutze die aktuelle Synology Version 1.13.9.5456 und die letzt verfügbare Sony Android Version.

Wie geht es denn nun weiter @Peter_S.?

Den ersten Fehler habe ich am 23.9 gemeldet und bisher ist nichts weiter geschehen aus meiner Sicht? Stand heute sind wir/ihr immer noch dabei zu eruieren ob der Fehler nun durch Plex, Sony oder die Magnetfeldstrahlung ( ) verursacht wird.

NVidia hatte den gleichen Fehler auf ihrer Shield Box und dort den Fehler unlängst behoben. Sony steht dem noch nach.

Also. Wie gehts weiter? Was sagt der Support nach mehr als 2 Monaten? Was habt ihr bisher gemacht? Wurde der Fehler auf die Buglist gesetzt?

[Darkrenzo]

I think we can safely say that it isnt plex. Logic strips that out of the equation for us.
The same videos that produce the green lines through the plex app on the Sony TV do not show them on the Shield, which is using the exact same Plex app. But this is after they identified it as a device issue and fixed it.
Logic dictates that this is a device issue, not an app issue.

I have been doung more reading and I think the issue lies in the de-compressor of the X-1 Extreme TV's.
This is some of what I have read - 

"Many devices marketed as '1080p' actually produce a signal that has a 1920x1088 field because 1088 is divisible by 16 which is more efficient for many encoding standards. It is the job of the receiver to properly frame the image within the displays native resolution."

"Due to the chosen 16x16 pixel size for a compressed video packet known as a macroblock as used in ITU H.261 to H.264 video standards, a 1080 line video must be encoded as 1088 lines and cropped to 1080 by the de-compressor. The 720 line video format divides perfectly by 16 and therefore does not require any lines to be wasted. "

This was written under an ATSC table - "1080* Considering these formats it should be mentionend that in reality 1088 lines are encoded in order to be sufficient for the MPEG-2 standard. The encoded vertical height must be divisible by 16 (progressive scan mode) or 32 (interlaced scan mode). The lowest 8 lines are black due to the MPEG standards."

"The actual frame size for 1080i/p is 1920x1088. The extra 8 scan lines are blank and are discarded by the receiver before the images are sent to the display. They are needed because of the requirements of MPEG compression which require the "dimensions" in both directions to be divisible by 16.
The "divisible by 16" requirement applies to each field in interlaced scanning. Consequently the number of scan lines in an interlaced scan frame must be divisible by 32. 1088 is divisible by 32 making the 1920x1088 frame size compatible with both interlaced and progressive scan."

So what I took from all that is that @Kuschelmonschter was right. The encoder has to be doing something to make these blank lines green, so some fault is there. BUT, the TV is supposed to cut out and discard those lines anyways and it is not.
Add that to the the info that pretty much all tv's that have seemingly bee affected have X-1 processors, you have a pretty good place for the techs to start working on the problem.