Loss of Audio and/or Resolution When Switching HDMI Inputs

[meatball]

Alright, this has been driving me batty for a while and wondering if anyone else has run into the same issue and has some ideas. First, a bit about my setup.

• Sharp Aquos 60" LCD TV
  Win 7 Home Media Center PC (BioStar A85S3 Mobo, AMD Trinity A6-5400K CPU, 8 GB RAM, Radeon HD5450 GPU)
  Yamaha RX-V367 Receiver
  Roku 3 (Dang you MS/Netflix for pulling the Netflix plugin from WMC...)

Connections are as follows.

• MC PC (HD5450 GPU) HDMI Out -> HDMI 1 In on Yamaha Receiver
  Roku 3 HDMI Out -> HDMI 2 In on Yamaha Receiver
  Yamaha Receiver HDMI Out -> HDMI 1 In on Sharp TV

So, there's my setup, and I'm seeing two problems often enough that it's annoying:

1) Occasionally when waking the Media Center up or switching back to the Media Center from the Roku on the Receiver, resolution will downgrade to 640 x 480 and the only way to fix it is to reboot the Media Center.

2) Occasionally when waking the Media Center up or switching back to the Media Center from the Roku on the Receiver, media center will have no audio at all and the only way to fix it is to reboot the Media Center.

Anyone run into either or both of these before?

[CyberSimian]

Occasionally when waking the Media Center up or switching back to the Media Center from the Roku on the Receiver, resolution will downgrade to 640 x 480 and the only way to fix it is to reboot the Media Center.

I will make two suggestions which worked for me, but which may not be of any use in your case:

(1) During WMC setup, there is a panel where you select the resolution that you want WMC to use. Initially I allowed this to default, meaning that WMC inherits the resolution of the desktop. I did not want the resolutions to be different, so I thought that this was the best choice. Not so! If the resolution of the desktop changes, WMC's resolution changes too.

So one solution is: during WMC setup select explicitly the resolution that you want WMC to use, even if it is the same as the resolution of the desktop. However, this is only going to have an effect when WMC starts. If you put your HTPC to sleep whilst remaining within WMC, this change will provide no benefit. You need to exit WMC to the desktop before putting your HTPC to sleep. Then when you wake your HTPC, press the green START button on the remote to start WMC, and at that point WMC will set the selected resolution.

(2) The other change is in the settings for the graphics adapter. I use an Nvidia, so I don't know whether your AMD has the necessary setting. The solution that cured the problem for me was to enable desktop resizing, and enable the option "allow the graphics adapter to resize the desktop" (instead of allowing the TV or application to resize the desktop).

-- from CyberSimian in the UK

[kmp14]

I am not sure if this would help you or not, but I think it would. I use a Gefen HDMI Detective Plus. It is a gadget that stores the EDID of a device (TV or Receiver for example), and then connects inline (in our case) between the Media Center PC and receiver. What id does is basically always present to the Media Center the EDID of the receiver so that even if the PC comes out of sleep or reboots when the receiver (or TV) is off, the PC still thinks that item is on and doesn't mess with the resolution or hdmi handshake. My problem was with the handshake, but this may solve your problem too (might be the same/similar problem?). It is pricey, but it works great!

http://www.gefen.com/kvm/ext-hd-edidpn. ... d_id=14859