Sony FMP-X5 Media Player Brings Netflix 4K to Legacy X9 TVs

Sony has launched its new FMP-X5 4K Media Player in the United Kingdom and Europe at a press event in London today, bringing HEVC/ H.265 decoder support to legacy Bravia X9 4K Ultra HD TVs, therefore allowing owners to access Netflix 4K streaming for the first time.

Sony FMP-X5

When Sony released their 84-inch KD-84X9005 in late 2012, and the 55-inch KD-55X9005A and the 65-inch KD-65X9005A last year, these UHD (ultra high-definition) televisions lacked several key next-generation specifications when it comes to playback of native 4K content. Although the Japanese manufacturer has begun issuing a HDMI 2.0 firmware update for these displays to support 4K resolution at higher frame rates (50Hz and 60Hz), HEVC decoding remained absent until now.

An external media box – which looks like a more compact version of the company’s popular PlayStation 4 (PS4) machine – is Sony’s solution. Connecting the FMPX5 to 2012/2013 Bravia Ultra HD 4K televisions will enable playback of HEVC video codec – such as the one used by Netflix to stream its House of Cards Season 2 in ultra high-definition – over HDMI. There is also a USB input on board for playback of HEVC material from an external USB device.

Sony FMP-X5

Unlike the FMP-X10 launched in the USA, the Sony FMP-X5 doesn’t come with any internal storage, and so won’t be compatible with the brand’s Video Unlimited 4K download service
(which still hasn’t been rolled out in the UK and European markets in any case). Support for Sony 4K projectors like the VPL-VW500ES and the VPL-VW1000ES, as well as rival VP9 codec used by Google for YouTube 4K, remains under consideration, a company spokesperson said.

The Sony FMPX5 will launch in August at a retail price of £350 (or €300 in European countries). The TV maker’s 2014 lineup of Bravia 4K LED TVs including the X85, X90 and X95 feature inbuilt HEVC decoding, and so won’t need this external decoder for Netflix 4K streaming.

2 comments

  1. Fantastic news and well done Sony for coming up with a solution for X9005A owners, the price is borderline acceptable really but hopefully it will be available for less than £300 , anyway Sony how about a discount for people that have bought the X9005A, surely it’s the least they should do?

  2. Well for me, it is quite simple. If Sony, Netflix and the industry at large continue with this preposterous notion we need a new box to decode a 15mbit/sec h.265 stream for 4K 60hz deep colour on an x9005a; rather than just re-task the mammoth amounts of programmable DSP inside the TVs. Then I’m completely done with a netflix sub and certainly won’t every be buying a Sony TV again.

    This Texas instruments pdf shows that the most amount of processing a TV would require to encode or decode h.265 is just 160Gflop/sec. Way below the TVs DSP, and way below a PS3 and a fraction of a PS4’s performance.

    http://www.ti.com/lit/ml/sprt661/sprt661.pdf

    Given decoding is far lighter than encoding, we can safely say that has many magnitudes more programmable DSP for the basic task of decoding a 4K netflix stream. So they should drop this silly marketing rubbish to sell us a £350 h.265 patent box, and just update the firmware and the netflix app, and stop messing around their most supportive customers and treating them like mugs.