[Canozzie]

HI all,

The system i have has worked fine for over a year, and i thought i would post this issue im having up here as i fully blame all of you for being so helpful setting all this up to start with

I have a home theater solution:
6 series 5 year old Samsung LCD Full HD TV,
HTPC now running openelec with Intel HD Graphics 1000 (GT1), (Intel® Pentium® CPU G620 @ 2.60GHz
Onkyo av receiver. (TX-SR 309)

I've been using windows on my htpc for a year, successfully. Until last month i discovered an unfix able handshake problem with (from what i can gather) windows pushing media through HDMI to my av receiver and on to my Samsung LCD. I get a blue screen. I thought this could be fixed simply by matter of insuring that everything upstream was ready to receive content before turning on the source (the HTPC) for example, I turn on the TV first, turn to correct video source, turn on av receiver-switch it to the correct channel and then turn on HTPC.

This appeared to work (very) in-frequently for a week or two, at which stage it would no longer. The HTPC still worked when i took the av receiver out of the equation, and just plugged it into the TV via HDMI...for a few weeks more, on and off. Now the HTPC wont push and signal through to the TV even with out the av receiver, it gives me a black screen and a 'no signal' when plugged into the tv directly via HDMI.

I have had the HTPC checked by the guy that build it, works fine still. (im assuming he plugged it into a pc monitor. I've had the av receiver checked by Onkyo authorized techs, works fine no faults. They would have just checked it with a bluray player or something simple they had in shop and ran it via hdmi thorugh to a tv they had i guess.

I took the HTPC and the av receiver in together to a retailer and told the salesmen if he can get a signal plugging these two into any TV in his shop ill buy it (trying to eliminate the TV as the problem) Same blue screen when plugged into brand new Samsung and Sony LEDs. I have tried every different HDMI port, av receiver channel and all 5 of my HDMI cords in every conceivable order and hdmi socket... Blue screen still. Something worth mentioning is that i can plug a samsung bluray player into the av receiver and it pushes the signal through to the tv fine, as does my WD media player when hooked in. Also im on the HTPC right now hooked up to the Samsung LCD via DVI.

I assumed it was a windows problem, however i have openelec running now and it still gives me the blue screen and black 'no signal'. Has anybody cam across a similar handshake issue. It appears the tv doesnt like content via hdmi from the htpc anymore. On two very rare occasions the blue screen was preceeded by a pink fuzzy one indicating that the tv doesn't like the video feed, but i guess that's obvious.

I suppose my next step will be to take the htpc in and have them check it with a different receiver in store. I dont think that will work though because the AV receiver isnt the problem. Failing that replace the htpc intel card for different model? Get a dedicated graphics card from nVidia or AMD and check it with that

I would like to solve the issue in-case it happens again though.

Any help will be appreciated?

oh heres some things i have tried:
Rolling back drivers
using windows restore point
Getting rid of windows and replacing with openelec
getting HDMI cords tested
Getting AV receiver tested
Getting HTPC checked and tested
using different ports on back of tv
turning on TV first, TV last, Amp first, Amp last, htpc first, htpc last tried just about every order including plugging in HDMI cords whilst devices are already on
Screaming at my fish


Cheers

[RaggSokk3n]

try a dgpu

[Canozzie]

Trying that tommoro, was actually going to swap it out for a diff intel board but maybe your right. Im on avs with this post too not getting much love their but they have old samsung handshake threads suggesting to upgrade the tv firmware, however my version is the one their all recommending to upgrade too (1011) So i figure ultimately it must come down to 1 of the devices not working properly, 2 of them not working together or all of them. Failing the dGPU ill sell off the amp and upgrade.

Actually was reading last night about port savers and (is it) HDCP/HDMI switches? anyone hear know about them for handshake issues?

[Canozzie]

....Bought a HDMI switch, tried a HDMI switch, returned a HDMI switch. Will attempt the graphics card tomorrow

[RaggSokk3n]

Remember that some Samsung TVs have specific ports that support PC (usually marked HDMI X/DVI or HDMI X/PC)

[nikc0069]

Having owned an Onko amp and run it against Windows 8, Windows 7 and Openelec, I would say it is almost certainly in your receiver.

The Onkyo's are pretty crap at reporting their capabilities to an HTPC, whether to onboard graphics or DGPU. I couldn't get it to pass hd bitstreaming in Windows 7 without an edid override and openelec wouldn't play anything smoothly that had anything more than dolby digitial.

I passed mine on to my brother and bought a Denon for £250, and there has been not a single problem. If you can borrow another amp from someone I'd try that first as Onkyo's are notorious for not handshaking with stuff properly.

Failing that, try an EDID override - I can help you find a decent on on AVS forums and ho to implement it in Openelec or Windows.

[Canozzie]

awesome cheers for that, i did see an edid config tuturial on openelec wiki for nVidia cards that claimed to fix hdmi handshake probs but disregarded it as mines an intel.

Didnt realize onkyo had the bad track record ill head out tomorrow and get the guy in the shop to try the htpc with some different receivers.

Thing is the htpc wont push any signal via hdmi through to the tv even without the amp now so i think something in the pc is wrong, maybe its the hdmi outlet at the back, as the DVI will work.

Replacing the receiver or the gpu should fix it. But like you say, failing that i'll hit u up for some edid guidance.

Thanks for your help nikc

[nikc0069]

It does seem odd that it would do with with your amp out of the picture - I'm not sure on the Samsung track record but I can assure you of the Onkyo problems. Funnily enough there is an edid on AVS forums which deals with this precise combo.

[Canozzie]

pre 2007 samsung had a terrible record however my tv is of the new firmware that rid the handshake issue. Besides these 3 components have been working fine over the last year and half. You would think if there was going to be a prob you would get it from the start?

If you have a link for the edid can you post it up mate, cheers

[nikc0069]

There is a massive bunch of edid overrides here Scroll down to point 5 in the first post.

[Canozzie]

Thanks for the link, that guy sure seems to know what he's talking about.

I tested the htpc with a pioneer avr in store today, gives me the black no signal screen. So i took it back into the pc guy that built it see if he cant find a problem with it and mentioned i wanted to swap out the video card.

I thought i had integrated graphics on it, and i thought integrated graphics meant no serperate card but i took of the case and theres a seperate card attached to the mobo. So i dont know whether iv got a discrete GPU or not.. i'll work it out with the guy on the phone when he calls back and decide what card i want and what card can fit in there.

Thanks again for your help guys.

[Vertigo]

when running openelec, it might be useful to post the output of xrandr and dmesg here.

If all else fails, considering its price, Im reluctant to recommend it, but from everything I hear, this little tool does seem to solve almost all HDMI handshake issues:
http://www.amazon.com/Gefen-EXT-HDMI-EDI...B001RIMZUW

On a side note; when researching my AVR, Ive read a lot of bad things about Onkyo when it comes to HDMI. Their HDMI boards seem to fail en masse. Now I dont think its your problem, but just to make sure, when you hooked up the bluray player, did you use the same HDMI port that you use for the HTPC?

[myweb]

The following works for me:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Device0"
Driver "nvidia"
VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation"
BusID "PCI:01:00:0"
Option "ConnectedMonitor" "DFP-0,DFP-1"
Option "UseHotplugEvents" "false"
Option "UseEDID" "true"
Option "IgnoreEDID" "false"
Option "CustomEDID" "DFP-0:/etc/X11/epson.edid.bin;DFP-1:/etc/X11/onkyo.edid.bin"

[noggin]

Having owned an Onko amp and run it against Windows 8, Windows 7 and Openelec, I would say it is almost certainly in your receiver.

The Onkyo's are pretty crap at reporting their capabilities to an HTPC, whether to onboard graphics or DGPU. I couldn't get it to pass hd bitstreaming in Windows 7 without an edid override and openelec wouldn't play anything smoothly that had anything more than dolby digitial.

I passed mine on to my brother and bought a Denon for £250, and there has been not a single problem. If you can borrow another amp from someone I'd try that first as Onkyo's are notorious for not handshaking with stuff properly.

Failing that, try an EDID override - I can help you find a decent on on AVS forums and ho to implement it in Openelec or Windows.

Have had two Onkyos - both working fine with Windows 7 and HD Audio bitstreamed, in both Windows 7 and OpenElec.

The older Onkyo amps DID have their foibles, it took me forever to realise that the PC needed to be connected to HDMI input 1 (aka DVD I think) to work properly with PCs, but the newer ones (I've got a TX-NR616 at the moment) work fine in my experience.

And yes - I had an HDMI board fail...