What's the issue(s) with Sony's implementation of HDMI on the KD-34XBR960?

At times I find that the video will just go blank/black. Turn the TV off/on usually solves the problem.

Other times, I get this problem with 1080i input from my Oppo Digital DV-981HD, but don't have a problem at 480i/p.

Is this a handshaking problem...?

:confused:

It's hard to say what the root cause of this issue is with your specific system, but we've seen this behavior in other systems. In those cases, we found that the source was timing out the HDCP authentication handshake. The HDCP spec requires that a source must attempt to perform the authentication indefinitely, but some sources attempt the HDCP authentication for only a fixed number of times, or a fixed amount of time. So the blank screen manifests when:
1) the source is turned on first, and it immediately attempts to perform HDCP authentication. However, because the TV is not yet on, the authentication fails.
2) the source then times out the authentication process, and shuts down the HDMI output
3) by the time the TV is turned on, the source has already given up on performing the HDCP authentication.
4) Power cycling the TV asserts a hot plug event to the source, which forces it to re-perform the authentication, which now works since the TV is on.

Try turning on your TV first, then turning on the source well after the TV is powered up. If the problem goes away, this is quite possibly the reason why you are seeing this phenomenon.