BUG: USB issues in Android 7.0

[Jecht_Sin]

There you are, @Anonymous, as requested:

Before upgrading my 49XD8099 to Android 7.0 I had this scenario:

• Android 6.0.1 could not format my Lexar JumpDrive P20 64GB USB 3.0 pen drive as extended memory
• I could correctly use an old 60GB HDD as extended memory
• I migrated the "/sdcard" into the external disk
• A couple of weeks ago it became Read-Only and so it stayed.

After upgrading to 7.0 I tested what was the situation:

• The /sdcard was still mounted on external the HDD and still Read-Only
• A couple of apps in the HDD that disappeared showed up again
• Trying to move an app from the HDD to the internal memory Settings kept crashing (always)

So I did a factory reset.. And this became the situation:

• The Lexar JumpDrive P20 64GB USB 3.0 pen drive could finally format as extended memory, but taking a loong time (a dozen minutes?)
• I could successfully migrate the internal memory into the pen drive
• I could successfully copy files into the /sdcard (which was in the pen drive)
• Trying to move apps around Settings was crashing again

All was fine until few hours later, when the /sdcard became Read-Only again! i could not copy any more files (58GB free). The Memory Setting was nearly untouchable because it was a crash after another. The only USB operation I could do from the tv  has been to format the pen drive as external and that (I think) restored the internal memory as internal memory (losing the content but there wasn't much).

Oh, I also tried to use the old HDD again, but the crashes when clicking on any app location were constant again so I gave up. I didn't touch it since, to avoid another headache.

[Kuschelmonschter]

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Right now my 8G are already full and I am unable to install further stuff from Google Play Store.

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Kudos to you that you found so many useful apps on Android TV. But that's probably the reason why your TV went bananas...

I have ADATA and Kingston pen drives which basically work. But the buggy USB drivers often make the drives get lost upon standby. I try to keep the flaky system as clean and slim as possible though.

[Kuschelmonschter]

Right now my 8G are already full and I am unable to install further stuff from Google Play Store.

[hvalentim]

The truth of the matter is: Sony announces it is possible to extend the internal memory of the TV and that claim turns out to be FALSE.

It does not work. Even immediatly after a factory reset, it does not work properly.

[Kuschelmonschter]

That's how Sony acts these days...

In the beginning of their Android TV endeavor, they claimed that their TVs will support PVR... it arrived over half a year later. They claimed that starting with 2016, all their TVs will do YouTube HDR. Still no device does, and early 2016 models (XD85/XD93/XD94) never will due to a lack of VP9.2 hardware. They claimed that early 2016 models will build on a new HW platform with faster processor and will be released with Marshmallow, which then arrived a year later. Now we are waiting for stuff like Nougat and Google Assistant, owners of 2017 premium models are waiting for the Dolby Vision FW update to arrive. Stuff which Sony has announced but is not delivered in time.

Core features like the TV Guide in the SideView app, which Sony has actively been advertising in the past, get removed from one day to the other without a replacement.

Hardly any bug or crash ever gets fix, some severe ones have been present since the very beginning, not to mention security updates which are only included in major FW updates.

All we can do is inform people and step on the toes of all those lobby reviewers and news sites.

[Jecht_Sin]

@hvalentim Yes, same here. When I managed to have it formatting fine with an old HDD (speed at about 60MB/s) it went Read Only after few days. And there it stayed. Same with my Lexar USB Key, when eventually it managed to format and get recognized (after many tries): Read Only in few hours.

Also, what is really annoying, is that I can't even use it to move the Kodi data in the USB Key mounted as an SD Card because the transfer speed is about 30MB/s (measured with "busybox dd" via "adb shell"). This USB Key measures at least 240 MBytes/sec (I write it fully so it isn't a mistake "bit per byte"), which is the reason why I bought it.

It's needless to say that Kodi performances drop drastically.

[Kuschelmonschter]

I now measured speed of an ADATA S102 Pro (rated at 90MB/s READ and 25MB/s WRITE)...

As removable (FAT32):

READ: 79MB/s

WRITE: 25MB/s

... almost the rated speed.

As device/internal:

READ: 34MB/s

WRITE: 13MB/s

Neadless to say that this is way too slow. So I wonder what the bottleneck is? It can't be the encryption/decryption as otherwise, internal memory would be as slow (which gives me 105MB/s READ and 30MB/s WRITE). I also tried a fast USB3.0 HDD which gave me 35mbps READ and WRITE.

[Jecht_Sin]

@Kuschelmonschter yes, formatted as internal memory the performances of the USB Key dropped even more. Then I am not really sure, but I think that the old USB HDD instead was reaching 60MB/s (which was its real maximum transfer speed, being quite old).

It might be something messed up in the drivers with flash memory on USB devices formatted as ext4 (and then encrypted). But I have no clue at all. I just know it is useless.

[Kuschelmonschter]

After updating my ATV1 based TV to Nougat, I am now also suffering from the same problem that the drive becomes READ_ONLY from time to time. I tried to measure speed with Disk Speed Test. Half way in an I/O error occurred and the drive turned READ_ONLY.

Drives formatted as internal are still ultra slow.

So extending storage via some external USB memory is still not recommended! This Android TV is simply not usable on Sony/MediaTek.

[Jecht_Sin]

Yeah, it's quite unreliable. And slow. I was doing some tests with my Apple TV 4K to decide which protocol between SMB/NFS/webDAV is faster (and the winner is.. webDAV!!), using the Jellyfish demos. With webDAV I managed to play smootly the 400Mbps version. Then out of curiosity I tried to play with Sony's Video the same 400Mbps demo stored in my external 320/240MByte/s R/W speed (on my Mac. And yes, Bytes, not bits) USB key and it was stuttering.

But that's it. After buying the Apple TV 4K I gave up doing tests with this awful attempt at implenting an OS. The only thing that still bothers me are the VP9.2 API/drivers/Codecs/whatever still broken (HDR in YouTube, as you know.. ).

[Kuschelmonschter]

I also did some tests with Jellyfish yesterday. When performing a WiFi Speed Test on my Sony ATV1, I got about 100mbps with Marshmallow, now I get around 200mbps with Nougat which is quite an improvement. I did not dare to go over the 120mbps sample though. That's in the ballpark that an UHD BD can be. Everything above that makes no sense IMHO.

There are really multiple points of failure when playing such high bitrate files. Most players on Sony ATV even struggle to play it from a fast USB3 disk. Kodi 18 Leia Alpha played the 120mbps file fine. I then also tried it via DLNA and SMB from a Windows machine (currently waiting for my new QNAP NAS case to arrive). For the first time, the sample played fine with Nougat. But CPU usage was 60% and higher. Those samples are only 30fps. I wonder what would have happened with a 60fps one... Those TVs are designed for streaming highly compressed Netflix (mostly 24p) content. Anything above that might not play reliably.

[Jecht_Sin]

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@Kuschelmonschterwrote:

I also did some tests with Jellyfish yesterday. When performing a WiFi Speed Test on my Sony ATV1, I got about 100mbps with Marshmallow, now I get around 200mbps with Nougat which is quite an improvement.

Seriously? You've got 200Mbps over WiFi? Effective or just the reported connection speed by some app? Not that it really matters to me, I have bought a 1Gbps ethernet switch, so I have everything wired, with all devices directly connected to each other in my room.

I did not dare to go over the 120mbps sample though. That's in the ballpark that an UHD BD can be. Everything above that makes no sense IMHO.

Sure. Mine was just a test to see which protocol could transfer at a better speed. Then I tested it with the TV via USB 3.0 and the stuttering result surprised me a bit. Now I don't know if it was due to the low USB speed, the decoder unable to play a 400Mbps video or both. I mean, i didn't investigate it at all, it was just to see how it worked.