4K HDR playback on SONY KD65XD7505?

by joscha262

I have really bad internet at home so I cannot stream movies from Google Play Movies & TV. I want to watch show and movies nevertheless so I download movies. The format is an .mkv file. Is there a way to playback those kind of files directly through AndroidTV? Will this support HDR and 4K resolution?

I can connect my MacBook as well and use VLC or IINA to play those files too, but do I get HDR over HDMI?

Thank you for answering and helping me out. Cheers

l0stie815

I've the same tv install VLC media player from the app store.

netflix-uk-1971
  1. mkv is a container file that contains the video and audio stream for a movie where those video and audio streams will be encoded in specific codec formats
  2. the video stream within an mkv will be encoded in with a codec that may or may not be supported by your KD-65XD7505. In other words an mkv file, whether it be a local mkv or streamed, may or may not successfully playback the video in that mkv file
  3. the audio stream within an mkv will be encoded in with a codec that may or may not be supported. Due to 2. it's entirely possible to have a file that plays back video fine but with no audio and vice versa
  4. there's some more general information about supported media formats on android here (not android TV specific): https://developer.android.com/guide/topics/media/media-formats.html
  5. The user with username Kuschelmonschter in the Sony forums does a great job of maintaining a record of what's supported and what's not supported with Sony Bravia TVs in this doc. I suggest you take a look and read the media playback section: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EPzlq_ipIPMCDoMqMgDl0IuKmTsMoZHeKKwE_zxbFUk/pub

You could just try it with whatever mkv you have to see if it works. You might get lucky this time then you might be unlucky next time.

If you've not already done so I'd recommend installing VLC and MX Player, both are installable via the play store on android TV on the Sony Bravia TVs. These are probably your best hope for the widest playback support.

ianrobbie

I have the same TV and use Kodi to stream movies from a NAS. Works perfectly.

BiggussDikkuss

HDR over HDMI needs a HDMi 2.0a connector.

Mixed SDR and then HDR video playback needs device Firmware and Operating System (OS) support.

4K HDR is encoded using 10bit HEVC (H.265) video compression. The media player must also be able to hardware decode that.

The (Nougat) NVIDIA Shield can playback 4K HDR.

However NO Google Android Nougat OS has colorspace conversion/switching support for mixed hands off SDR and then 4K HDR video playback.

You have to manually switch, in Android (Nougat) device settings to the correct colorspace if you want correct color outputs on a device like the NVIDIA Shield when playing back mixed SDR and then HDR video. A PITA for long term usage.

This thread over on the Kodi forums details which external media player devices you should be looking at for proper SDR / 4K HDR video playback support:

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=325077

For Sony HDR Android TV's, Sony themselves very likely have bypassed Google's lack of OS colorspace switching support by using custom Firmware and also a dedicated video playback App that can directly tap into such Firmware.

Good luck getting high bitrate (50 - 90 Gbps) 4K HDR video streams in to the Sony TV either via AC WiFi or 100Mbps Ethernet without video playback stutter. Maybe a directly connected USB HDD will fare better on the instances.