Sony Bravia series IP control problems
fogled@mizzou
Posts: 549
We are having some trouble with Sony Bravia series using Simple IP control. The displays have a tendency to drop offline, and need a hard power cycle to come back online. The displays usually indicate their network connection is offline as well when this happens, but we've seen it happen both ways. There's some correlation between expected network traffic loads, and the displays locking up, but it's not consistent. We experience the most problems when the displays are in an SVSi environment, or on our biggest VLAN which has over 900 active devices on it. We've got multicast blocked on the ports that feed devices like the TV's.
We're probably going to backgrade the TV's to RS-232 control (in some cases using MOXA boxes or similar) to do an end-run around the problem. I have an XBR850 running RS-232 already, and it seems stable.
Does anyone else out there have any similar experiences with these TV's, and possibly any advice to improve their IP stability?
Comments
What network switches do you have and in what manner are you blocking multi-cast?
Three switch scenarios: One using Cisco 350 series switches, and I've got multicast disabled via a radio button in the switch's configuration web interface; another where we've just got some basic NetGear POE16 switches, hanging off our IT department's Cisco Catalyst switches, and a third where we're just using the switch ports in an SDX in a small environment.
I take that back about the multicast blocking. I apparently never set the multicast settings on that particular switch. That's set now. I spent some time forgetting about the RS-232 settings in the menus on those TVs during the RS232 conversion. I've ended up leaving that TV in IP control mode, with multicast blocked on the switch port. I should know whether that improves it's stability in a week or so.
We've used a lot of these Sony Android displays (hundreds), but always the commercial ones (FWD; without TV tuner). In connection with AMX it's always IP control, with smaller controllers (Extron MLC) it's usually RS232.
There are some occasional glitches with IP control, but it's rare and never repeatable. Never had a device lock up requiring a power cycle. We always use static IP addresses. I seem to remember when not setting DNS servers, the display claimed it had no network connection, although IP control worked, but maybe it's trying to do something 'smart'. In the newer 4K displays the DNS servers are preset to Google's. What is important that in 'Network' > setup home network' > IP control > set 'simple IP control' is set to ON' (this is from memory, menu's could be a little different).
If using RS232 with the newer 4K models be sure to send 'standby enable' before turning it off, or it won't turn on again. That's fairly obvious. Maybe a little less obvious is when the device loses power, after power comes back, it won't turn on with an RS232 command anymore. What we usually do is to set the display in 'Pro mode' and have it always turn on when power comes back. You can then use the control system to determine if the display should really be on (not funny when 20 displays turn on at 3 am, lighting the entire building...).
So no solution here, just saying that it's probably not the displays itself, although I guess you can never be sure.
Thanks for the validation of the IP control on these units. When I first started using them, I loved them and didn't have any trouble with them. It's only more recently that we've started having issues, as we've mixed them with SVSi environments, and our AV VLANs have grown.
I've actually discovered a 2nd SVSi installation where multicast was still being allowed to non-SVSi devices, among them two more of the TVs we are having the most trouble with. We were buying new Cisco 350's before AMX had the configuration files nailed for them, and struggled with initial setup on them. Not terribly surprising there's still some configuration issues in the switches. I won't know if correcting the switch configurations fixes those particular TV connection issues for a week or so.
We do continue to have issues with a set of about 30 of them on our big VLAN (currently ~900 active devices mostly AMX & Epson stuff). I'm almost certain we've got manual DNS defined in them. But I think I need to compile more details on the failures before I do anything else.
There was a firmware update for the Sony's a while back that fixed IP connection drops. We saw it a few times in different scenarios and a firmware update always fixed it.
Simon
We've been trying to keep the firmware up to date on them, although we have to keep automatic updates turned off or the update borks the display anyway. I know the ones in the SVSi systems are current, but I'm not sure about the other ones on the other VLAN. I'll double check all those TVs and make sure they've got the latest firmware updates. Thanks for the tip!
Discovery: Someone sent students out to do the firmware updates on the displays. For the most part our student workers do a pretty good job, but...
G'day Mate,
I had similar issues with Cisco SG300 switches. To replicate easily, get everything working and turn off the mains power to the panel and the network switch and turn back on at the same time and it should fail. This was easily repeatable with different displays. But did not happen on unmanaged switches.
Long story short, the panel had an IPV4 IP address but an IPV6 mac address. Disabling IPV6 would stop this issue.
Maybe this will help with yours.
Goodluck.
UPDATE ON ISSUE: We have determined that IPv6 had not been disabled on any of the TV's. That's been taken care of now. We've gone one full week since correctly disabling multicast from the SVSi systems to the TV control network port, and haven't seen any additional connection losses yet. Another week of confidence building, and I'll probably be able to declare this issue resolved with the following:
The fix(es) aren't fully confirmed yet, but we're headed that way.
If there is not a multicast subscriber on that port not sure what benefit that gets you if the switch has been properly configured for IGMP.
Agreed, that doesn't make a lot of sense.
So far only one TV in one of the SVSi systems has gone offline once, and I'm not sure how solid that report is. By the time I got there, the user had inadvertently changed the TV to DHCP instead of Fixed IP. No trace or clues on what precipitated the initial offline event.
Two more 65" units at a far-flung site: they are apparently not even the same TV even though they have the same model number. One of them took an update to Version 8.x, the other one only took an update up to version 7.x. Interestingly, the one that landed on version 8+ no longer has the IPv6 setting anywhere in it's network menu. It's apparently the only TV in our stable with that version firmware, and no IPv6 setting in it's menu. That's curious.