WMC HDMI Handshake issues

[SJMaye]

This may be old news, but I can’t seem to find the correct search terms to find it.  

I leave my WMC running all the time.  Normally I just tap a remote button and the picture comes up.  Some time ago I had issues with powering up my TV and having no picture from WMC.   I hunted around the web and found others with the same issue.  They claimed it was an HHDMI handshake issue between MC and the TV.  For whatever reason the problem seemed to clear itself up.  Now it has returned.  I have to pull the HDMI from the TV and put it back in.  This seems to reset things and I have a picture.

Is there a fix to this problem?  I had the same problem with a satellite STB a while back that seemed to be fixed when I changed the HDMI cable.  Can that be the cause?

[oliverredfox]

Try Hdmi-Yo.  It will redo the HDMI handshake on resume (or on a bound key press).

[RehabMan]

I’ve gone the route of having my Harmony remote shut down WMC (Alt+F4) when I put the system to sleep.  It also re-launches WMC (GreenButton) when you turn the system on.  This way the handshake is always done with the Windows desktop, not WMC.  This has solved all my HDMI issues, which were 1) dropping back to 1024×768 resolution, and 2) black screen.

By the way, you can usually get your screen back from the black-screen by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del then hitting Esc.  The 1024×768 problem requires running back through WMC TV setup.

[SJMaye]

Thank you both for your replies.  When this first cropped up HDMI-Yo was just coming out.  Since the problem disappeared I never had need to try it.  At the same time people were claiming W7 SP1 would cure it and to hang on until released.  SP1 came and went and I still have the problem. 

I appreciate the keystroke sequence.  For me it would be OK, but I travel a bunch.  I don’t see my wife pulling the keyboard out.   You know the wife factor.

[swoon]

An alternative way to close and open WMC upon standby and resume is to use Andrew’s Standby Helper.

[SJMaye]

I don’t think my problem is standby as I never allow mine to go in to standby.  It is always on.  The only thing that does happen is the screen times out and goes blank after 10 minutes of inactivity.

Will a standby helper do anything for that?

[RehabMan]

You will probably want to just turn that behavior off.  See Power Options in the Windows Control Panel.  Generally,  you don’t want Windows to be turning off your display when it detects idle.

In your case, I don’t think the standby helper app mentioned above will do you any good for the occasional black screen when your TV/amp turns back on (ie. even though your PC is never sleeping, your TV/amp are going into standby which tends to cause the same HDMI handshake issue with the WMC app.)… You should probably look into what I’m doing which is to shutdown and restart WMC as appropriate (ie. when you turn on / turn off your AV system).

[Glitchy]

moninfo.exe

don’t claim to understand it all, but after stumbling around in the program, I got my onkyo, samsung and HTPC all talkin’ to each other and they “seem” to still know whats up even after a full bare metal reinstall of my HTPC.

It just combines the EDID info of all your devices into one file.

 

A free program

Jeff

[SJMaye]

I don’t want to eliminate the HTPC shutting down the display after a time at idle.  It plays well with my TV.  Once the display shuts down the TV will shutdown a few minutes thereafter.  Nice for protection from burn-in.

moninfo.exe sounds interesting.  Will read more.  I would like to understand how it fixes it.

 

[Glitchy]

monifo

Has nothing to do with your “sleep state settings”, it just all of your CE deivces talkin’ to another for the shake.

It just takes the TV EDID, Receiver EDID and I think HTPC EDID and puts them all in one EDID file so they know each other

 

Jeff

[SJMaye]

I did not mean to imply monifo did.  That comment was aimed at thoughts to change my power settings to keep my display on 24/7.  I don’t want to do that.

monifo sounds more like what I am trying to get at; get the HDMI signal to reinitialize once the display turns back on.

 

[SJMaye]

Update-  I used moninfo and is working without a hitch so far.

[SJMaye]

Update on my use of moninfo.exe. After using my custom INF driver for my DLP TV I started getting random BSOB and autoreboot. Do not know for sure that was the problem, but it seemed to coincide. I switched back to the generic MS PNP driver and no crashes for 2 days.

I reinstalled HDMIYo.  Will see what happens.

[oliverredfox]

Are you using Nvidia drivers by any chance?  Lots of reports of BSOD and issues with the current drivers.

[SJMaye]

No. Using ATI/AMD.  No issues prior to using the driver moninfo created for my TV.

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