HDMIdetective fixed one problem, but now I have a new one…

[DavidStein]

I have an windows 7 htpc that stays on all the time, connected via HDMI directly to my television.

I was having the common problem where the htpc would revert to 1024×768 at least half the time after turning off my tv and then turning it back on if 7mc were in fullscreen mode, necessitating toggling it into and out of windowed mode.

 

For xmas I received an HDMIdetective to take care of that problem, but now I am getting a new issue: when switching to liveTV (received via a hauppauge DCR-2650 cable card tuner) I am getting the error about needing HDCP support. I would get that from time to time in the past but it would always make the handshake after a couple seconds. now it just sits there until I put 7mc into and out of windowed mode, afterwhich it works perfectly.

I thought the hdmidetective was supposed to maintain that hdcp handshake and EDID data? this toggling into and out of windowed mode is what I was trying to avoid.

[Glitchy]

[quote=DavidStein]

I have an windows 7 htpc that stays on all the time, connected via HDMI directly to my television.

I was having the common problem where the htpc would revert to 1024×768 at least half the time after turning off my tv and then turning it back on if 7mc were in fullscreen mode, necessitating toggling it into and out of windowed mode.

 

For xmas I received an HDMIdetective to take care of that problem, but now I am getting a new issue: when switching to liveTV (received via a hauppauge DCR-2650 cable card tuner) I am getting the error about needing HDCP support. I would get that from time to time in the past but it would always make the handshake after a couple seconds. now it just sits there until I put 7mc into and out of windowed mode, afterwhich it works perfectly.

I thought the hdmidetective was supposed to maintain that hdcp handshake and EDID data? this toggling into and out of windowed mode is what I was trying to avoid.

[/quote]

Did you flip the dip switch? #4 ? (maybe #5). Just checking  🙂

I just got one too, but haven’t installed it yet. There is something in the instructions about it.

Jeff

 

[DavidStein]

I had thought that the dipswitchs were just another way to set the EDID info and didn’t have anything to do with the HDCP handshake, but I did go through it quickly. I just looked at the manual online and saw the part about having to set dipswitch 4 to ensure hdcp compliance.

 

thank you.

[oliverredfox]

If it still acts up with the dip switch set, I’m guessing you are using a short HDMI cable between the computer and the Detective.  If so, use a longer cable, short cables can sometimes cause weird HDCP issues from what I understand.

[DavidStein]

I set it up following _all_ of the instructions this evening and so far it seems to be working properly now. I am using the short cable provided in the HDMIdetective box between the HDMIdetective and the display at the moment, so hopefully I won’t have any problems, but if I do I’ll try a longer cable.

[DavidStein]

New issue that only cropped up with the HDMIdetective installed but is the fault of windows (maybe 7mc specifically):

Not that I have to do it very often, but when the computer either restarts or cold starts, the bios, windows loading screen, and welcome/login screen all are displayed at 1080p as expected.

but as soon as it changes to the desktop (with 7mc opening automatically) the display reverts to 1024×768. Once i manually change it back its happy and I can turn off the television all I want without it changing away from 1080p, but every time the computer starts up windows briefly freaks out and goes to 1024×768

Any suggestions? I was going to change 7mc to not start automatically to see if its the windows desktop or 7mc (i suspect its the latter) but if so does that information help me?

[RehabMan]

There is just strangeness with Media Center dealing with (HDMI) resolution negotiation.  Sometimes I wish there was an option to force WMC to not use FSE (full screen exclusive) mode and just behave like a normal full screen application on the desktop (as far as I know, there is no such option), because it does seem the Windows 7 desktop does not have the issues that WMC does.

I have the HDMI detective and it fixed a lot of problems when turning the TV on/off while WMC is running (ie. set a music playlist, turn tv off, go to change it, so turn tv on, problems…).  But the HDMI detective didn’t seem to solve some of the problems when WMC comes out of sleep mode (black screen, wrong resolution).

So I have my Harmony remote automatically close WMC before putting the system to sleep, and have it automatically restart WMC when waking the system up.  This avoids 99.9% of the problems (I’m not going to say it is perfect, but it is close).  It is not quite as “clean” when the system starts up (you see the WMC splash screen), but it generally works…

[umdivx]

David,

  When you setup Media Center and go through the display options did you set it up as an flat screen with HDMI? If so go through the Media Center setup again for the display but this time choose CRT/Tube TV with Component and see if that changes anything.

-Josh

[DavidStein]

So as it turns out, it wasn’t the HDMIdetective or 7mc that was at fault. I disabled 7mc starting upon windows startup and the resolution still was forced to 1024×768 so I did some more googling and it turns out that the windows live mesh remote connection service, which I had installed before traveling for the holiday in case i needed to access my htpc, is to blame. I just didn’t think of it because that change in my system was a week or two old (it just so happened that I had never restart my computer since installing it). I set that service to a delayed start and sure enough a couple minutes after restarting my computer the resolution would get forced to 1024×768, set it to disabled and the problem is gone.

 

so thank you all for your help but it was my own damn fault.

[Author]

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