topic Re: Upgrading RAM in TV -- Slow AndroidTV Performance in Android TV

Upgrading RAM in TV -- Slow AndroidTV Performance

Michael_017 — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 00:05:28 GMT

Hey All,

I've read through the forum and noticed that many people have performance issues with AndroidTV. Has anyone attempted adding more RAM/removing and replacing the RAM?

I called Sony to ask them about it and they said it would void my warranty. I then said, "I'm okay with that, please tell me where it is and if it can be removed/upgraded." The unbelievable response I received was "we cannot give you that information and you aren't permitted to open the TV."

Regardless of their ridiculousness, I'm wondering if anyone has tried this. I have to assume for the sake of cost, it's desktop or laptop memory. I would also assume that Sony wouldn't make it easy to do.

Thanks All,

Michael

Re: Upgrading RAM in TV -- Slow AndroidTV Performance

Jecht_Sin — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 06:32:31 GMT

I doubt it is possible. I believe the RAM is soldered in the mother board. As I am not sure either if the CPU is able to address more than 2GB of RAM. It may (probably), but it also may not. Far too many Android TV and boxes with Mediatek SoCs have only 2GB of RAM, so that might be the cause as well. I am afraid there is little if nothing you can do.

Re: Upgrading RAM in TV -- Slow AndroidTV Performance

Kuschelmonschter — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 06:45:59 GMT

RAM might also be piggybacked on the SoC. At least this is true for mobile SoCs. And a TV SoC isn't so much different.

It won't help much anyway. If something needs RAM, some app gets wiped anyway, freeing up some. The CPU is just darn slow and several Sony and MediaTek drivers/service constantly hogging the system. When playing with my sister's first generation Fire TV Stick with only a dual ARM Cortex A9 and Android Lollipop, I wonder anyway what Sony/MediaTek are doing. The experience is so much smoother on the Fire TV Stick..

Re: Upgrading RAM in TV -- Slow AndroidTV Performance

Jecht_Sin — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 08:06:28 GMT

@Kuschelmonschter wrote:
RAM might also be piggybacked on the SoC. At least this is true for mobile SoCs. And a TV SoC isn't so much different.

Are you sure about that?

I know the SoCs may include the RAM controllers, but to put the central memory in the SoC seems a bit over complicated. I believe it would make the design and the whole cost in general more expensive. Although I understand the need of keeping things small in the phones.

It won't help much anyway. If something needs RAM, some app gets wiped anyway, freeing up some. The CPU is just darn slow and several Sony and MediaTek drivers/service constantly hogging the system. When playing with my sister's first generation Fire TV Stick with only a dual ARM Cortex A9 and Android Lollipop, I wonder anyway what Sony/MediaTek are doing. The experience is so much smoother on the Fire TV Stick..

Well, more RAM always helps anyway. One may raise the disk buffer size, for example. Which helps a bit. And if the RAM is too low Android may find itself in a sort of loop closing and re-opening apps, a sort of trashing.

It's also worth nothing that Sony's Android devices (Xperia phones and Bravias) implement the Z-RAM (virtual memory - "swap" - in compressed RAM Disks). What I do not understand is why the TV uses this value:

vm.swappiness = 60

while my Xperia raises it to 100:

vm.swappiness = 100

effectively filling the Z-RAM.

Then I am in the same boat of yours. What I really do not understand is why the Full HD Bravia with Android 6.0.1 (i think it should have an MT5890 as well, like the first 4K Bravia) of my brother in law is noticeably faster than my TV. There is no lag browsing the Home, for example. Or going into the settings. The only reason I can give myself is that since it's 1080p it has to reserve less video RAM from the system memory.

Same for my Xperia M2 (with 1GB of RAM!!) running on Android 5.1.1. It has less than half the Antutu performances but it feels quite faster.

Re: Upgrading RAM in TV -- Slow AndroidTV Performance

Kuschelmonschter — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 07:49:02 GMT

Then I am in the same boat of yours. What I really do not understand is why the Full HD Bravia with Android 6.0.1 (i think it should have an MT5890 as well, like the first 4K Bravia) of my brother in law is noticeably faster than my TV. There is no lag browsing the Home, for example. Or going into the settings. The only reason I can give myself is that since it's 1080p it has to reserve less video RAM from the system memory.

Should be the same speed-wise. UIs are all rendered in 1080p. On 4K displays they just get upscaled in a dedicated hardware.

Re: Upgrading RAM in TV -- Slow AndroidTV Performance

Jecht_Sin — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 08:04:47 GMT

@Kuschelmonschter wrote:
Should be the same speed-wise. UIs are all rendered in 1080p. On 4K displays they just get upscaled in a dedicated hardware.

No, I understand that. But still it has to reserve some more "video" RAM for the upscaling. Since there is not dedicated video RAM it uses the system RAM, theoretically (I believe) reducing the RAM available for the OS and applications. For example this is the RAM shown as available in the system:

BRAVIA_ATV2:/ $ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       1613712    1452840     160872          0       6696     187100
-/+ buffers/cache:    1259044     354668
Swap:      1196348     694692     501656

It shows a total of about 1.6GB of RAM. 0.4GB are missing and (I believe) that's the RAM reserved for the graphics. The RAM used for the Z-RAM/swap (which changes dynamically in Linux) should be part of the 1.6GB. At least I always see 1.6GB max no matter how busy the Z-RAM is (like after a reboot, for instance).

As a matter of comparison, my Xperia X Compact (with a 720p screen) has 3GB of RAM. And this is the report for the memory available:

F5321:/ $ free
		total        used        free      shared     buffers
Mem:       2988208128  2816425984   171782144           0    12541952
-/+ buffers/cache:     2803884032   184324096
Swap:       805302272   462479360   342822912

nearly 3GB (well, considering 1GB = 10^9 bytes. I hate this mess with kilobytes and kibibytes. It will never end). Also the used swap can get much higher than that. I have seen it used at 90% or more.

Re: Upgrading RAM in TV -- Slow AndroidTV Performance

Kuschelmonschter — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 08:33:11 GMT

No, I understand that. But still it has to reserve some more "video" RAM for the upscaling. Since there is not dedicated video RAM it uses the system RAM, theoretically (I believe) reducing the RAM available for the OS and applications.

Not sure where this is done. Could very well be done in the X1 image processor (FPGA?) further downstream. Don't think that this little RAM can hold a stream of uncompressed 4K images.

Re: Upgrading RAM in TV -- Slow AndroidTV Performance

MarcWalli — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 11:21:46 GMT

You can boost your TV performance by activating Android Developer Options and deactivating the animations and limiting the number of 'background processes' to 4 (EDIT: This parameter will *probably* reset after shutting down your TV, so this is not a guaranteed fix, but you should try it at least). This will skyrocket the performance of your TV.

TIP: To Enable Developer Options go to Settings -> System Information and click repeatedly the Build Number. When activated you'll find the option near the bottom of the Settings Menu.

WARNING: Modifying Developer values can yield to an unusable TV, if you want to stay safe you should only modify Animations and Background Processes parameters, left all other values untouched.

Re: Upgrading RAM in TV -- Slow AndroidTV Performance

Kuschelmonschter — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 11:10:22 GMT

You should probably add that a full reboot resets the background process limit back to "unlimited". For me the TV still often reboots at night in standby, see bug #9 in my bug tracker. I also often have to manually reboot because something is not working properly anymore.

You should probably check whether your process limit is still properly set. For me this placebo didn't change a lot. But if it works for you that's fine.

Re: Upgrading RAM in TV -- Slow AndroidTV Performance

MarcWalli — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 11:23:34 GMT

You're right, I've edited my response. What worked for me was to disable animations and deactivate some default applications. Its working better right now, but it isn't blazing fast either. Maybe Android Oreo will fix that? If it ever comes of course lol

Re: Upgrading RAM in TV -- Slow AndroidTV Performance

Jecht_Sin — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 13:25:20 GMT

@Kuschelmonschter wrote:

Not sure where this is done. Could very well be done in the X1 image processor (FPGA?) further downstream. Don't think that this little RAM can hold a stream of uncompressed 4K images.

Yeah, I am not sure either. I think it is RAM reserved for the GPU (and the ASIC?), and the amount seems fixed. For example in my MacBook Pro I get "Intel Iris Graphics 6100 1536 MB". So up to 1.5GB of system RAM is gone to be used by the graphics, eve if just displaying

At least the OS shows 2.2GB of reserved memory, "wired" (as in untouchable). I believe that includes the RAM allocate by the kernel and by the graphics. But I really don't know, I have never investigated much the use of system RAM in integrated graphics.

Re: Upgrading RAM in TV -- Slow AndroidTV Performance

SesioNLive — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 16:15:46 GMT

I can advise to deblout the TV as much as possible. After that it does run at least a little better. (More free RAM and less CPU usage eg. less wasted cpu cycles).

Have a look at my post here:

https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=74490161&postcount=1249

and here

https://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=74521466&postcount=1259

WARNING: This might lead to your device being unstable, I am not responsible for any damage resulting from the changes you might apply to your TV.

You might also want to review the list I made and leave whatever you actually use. (Like I don't use sat tv).

Re: Upgrading RAM in TV -- Slow AndroidTV Performance

Jecht_Sin — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 08:15:15 GMT

Yes, disabling some apps and services may save a few % in CPU usage and also in RAM. But I am of the opinion that something is inherently wrong in this implementation of Android. Things like the unbelievably slow volume bar (which gets a bit faster when using an HDMI device, like the PS4), that was also crashing, the Home and Settings noticeably lagging, the Discovery menu disappearing, can be the symptoms of some serious bugs.

The CPU cores of these TVs are far from being efficient, but they are not really undersized for basic operations. It makes little sense that browsing in some apps (like Netflix or the now updated TIMvision app in Italy) is much less laggy than browsing Home (Leanback) with its few icons or the settings. Even Kodi v18 (alpha) the scrolling has got quite faster. That shows to me that optimisation is possible and, maybe, those system apps (like Home, Volume bar, Settings, etc) are using some APIs discarded in testing phase by third party developers. Sure, this last one is just a guess.

Then there are the known bugs. For example the unfamous Amazon Video. When I start a video the audio hiccups. Constantly sometimes. But if I go into audio settings (and thus outside the Amazon Video app), and I switch the DD Plus output to Dolby Digital and back, it partially stops. During the streaming or pausing the video is doesn't matter.

It happens only with Amazon Video (well, sporadically with other apps too. But I get the few millisecs of silence watching videos with the Chromecast in my kitchen's TV as well), but it gets partially fixed acting on Android's settings. So I really don't know who is to blame for that anymore, if Amazon or Sony/Mediatek. I'd say both because Amazon could still test its awful app and find some workaround like all other media players do.

The problem is that, judging from Sony removing the announcement for the incoming announcement in fall of Android 7.0 for ATV1, I believe Mediatek (as usual) isn't really trying to iron out those bugs. Amazon itself switched from Mediatek to Amlogic in the last Fire TV. Maybe because they have got a better deal (probably), it even seems the last model (with Amlogic) is slower. But I like to think that it's also because they have got quite sick of the lack of support from that Mediatek company. Which apparently doesn't even disclose the source code to its customers. Although I don't know about Amlogic practices.

Re: Upgrading RAM in TV -- Slow AndroidTV Performance

SesioNLive — Sat, 02 Dec 2017 08:25:28 GMT

Yeah it could be optimized way more.

Just look at all Amazon devices, they run on Android also have between 1-2 GB of RAM and 2-4 core MediaTek SoCs.

No matter if you get an fire TV stick or fire TV box, it runs so much better and smoother than Sony ATVs.

They cost you what, between 40 and 100€? And Sonys ATVs 1500-4500€?

So yeah, Sony is definitely doing something wrong.