Broken PVR - no picture?

DaBoz · 21-03-2007, 20:47

I was watching a recorded program and picture went black, but sound continued. Returned to live TV and picture and sound were gone. The menus worked fine, as does the EPG and the Press Red symbol in the top right when switching BBC channels.

Reset button... same problem. Power off for half hour... same problem.

There's no picture or sound on any channel, or recorded or on demand programs, but the menus work fine. As I said the menus, EPG etc. all work fine. Just no playback live or otherwise.

I'll call support tomorrow (it's gone 8pm grr) but anyone ever hear of this sort of thing?

The unit is well vented and not overheating.

Boz

Nedkelly · 21-03-2007, 20:50

Is the online light on .

DaBoz · 21-03-2007, 22:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nedkelly

Is the online light on .

Are you serious?

---------- Post added at 21:23 ---------- Previous post was at 20:58 ----------

Interesting observation... if I press the standby button on the remote, then press again to turn the V+ box on, the current channel's picture appears with no sound, then a 4:3 black square fills all but the edges of my 16:9 screen, then it all goes except for the EPG information.

Bizarre-a-mungus

Boz

---------- Post added at 22:43 ---------- Previous post was at 21:23 ----------

My V+ box is still merrily recording programs as normal, but still no picture or sound.

---------- Post added at 22:44 ---------- Previous post was at 22:43 ----------

er... why are my posts appearing in one post?

Googleflump · 21-03-2007, 22:59

Ok this is going to sound strange but I had very similar symptoms:

- I was watching an on demand and all was OK

- Suddenly screen went black, with no sound but menus continued to work

- I reboot, and the picture appears for 1 second in 16:9 then a black box overlays this in 4:3, then the whole screen goes black. This affects all channels (although oddly I can still see the "press red" button when trying to watch bbc) but menus continue to work.

Now the strange part.....

This was all through using the original HDMI cable supplied with the V+. I took it out and plugged the end that was in the tv into the V+ and vice versa....hey presto picture and sound are back!

When I reverse it I get exactly the same problem again. If I use a completely different HDMI cable it is fine no matter which end I plug into what.

As I said, very, very strange. My HDMI cable has decided to make itself uni-directional....!! (or I'm just going mad...)

If anyone else has experienced this insane behaviour I'd be glad to hear from you! But as for your problem DaBoz if you are using HDMI try swapping the cable ends / using a different HDMI cable.

DaBoz · 22-03-2007, 08:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Googleflump

As I said, very, very strange. My HDMI cable has decided to make itself uni-directional....!! (or I'm just going mad...)

If anyone else has experienced this insane behaviour I'd be glad to hear from you! But as for your problem DaBoz if you are using HDMI try swapping the cable ends / using a different HDMI cable.

It worked!!! I was on the phone to the VM support as I read your post and just as the girl was booking my tech appt, it switched cables and it worked! She added it to their list of things to try.

However I have concerns. First, why would the V+ box or TV suddenly demand that HDMI work one way only?

Second, it may be just be may, but the picture looks a bit blurry and more pixelated than usual. Googleflump, did you think your picture has worsened since swapping cables round?

Boz

dontpannic · 22-03-2007, 14:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaBoz

er... why are my posts appearing in one post?

Save space rather than having 4 posts in one thread, they put 4 posts in one post... if that makes sense...! You could have just edited your post to include the other messages...

Nick

DaBoz · 22-03-2007, 17:27

Googleflump, what date/time did your picture go black and what TV have you got?

For me it was 21st March at about 7pm whist watching a recorded program from TVDrive. My TV is a Toshiba 32WL66.

Cheers

Boz

Googleflump · 22-03-2007, 22:21

Quote:

Originally Posted by DaBoz

Googleflump, what date/time did your picture go black and what TV have you got?

For me it was 21st March at about 7pm whist watching a recorded program from TVDrive. My TV is a Toshiba 32WL66.

Cheers

Boz

Hi Boz

I noticed the problem as I had to do a bit of re-wiring. With all the new on demand movies that need an HDMI connection, I decided to hook up HDMI to my V+ (previously I had used component as there is only 1 HDMI port on my TV, and my DVD player was plugged into that).

So then I started to watch the film (can't remeber what it was) and then the problem happenned. This was probably about a month ago, and I only recently got round to looking into it to find the cause (I had just gone back to using component).

On the picture quality side, to my eyes the HDMI connection is nowhere near as good as my component connection. But this is probably because my component leads are of a high quality, whereas the HDMI cable supplied with the V+ is probably bog standard.

Have a look at one of the old sky channels, the Virgin Media notice that appears has a black background. This background looks very blocky to me - does it to you? I have a Samsung 26" LCD TV btw.