Equipment:
Sony KDF-E42A10 HDTV
Pioneer Elite VSX-82TSX Receiver
Oppo DV970HD DVD
Velodyne CHT Front Row Speakers
Tivo Series 3




Briefly:

I have a Tivo Series 3 that has an HDMI port.

I had it for 6 months, no problem.

I upgraded my entire HT-nothing major mind you.

Anyway I figured as long as I was doing a little upgrading, I would upgrade my component cables as well. After I connected the new cables, or shortly after, I lost my HDMI connection from my Tivo. I did not make any correlation at that time as I had some other changes in the setup as well.

I did some troubleshooting with Tivo and we could not figure it out, so it was determined I should send under warranty Tivo in for an exchange.

Mind you before I was authorized for the exchange we tried many, many things, including using a verified working HDMI cable from Tivo to TV, and nothing.

This brings us to yesterday. I connect with the same new component cables and verified working HDMI cable. I power up the new Tivo and I was able to view the "welcome" screen via components and HDMI.

Since it was a new Tivo it needed to reboot itself to get to guided setup. Well after this first reboot, boom no HDMI.

This was late yesterday so I just figured I'd wait until today. So I woke up extra early before work :eek:

I powered up the Tivo and noticed the component was all blurry and unclear, but HDMI was working again.

I went behind and saw the green component cable had become a little loose, so I pushed it back in. I came back around the front and the component input was now clear as a bell. Check HDMI-Gone!

Go behind again, unplug the green component cable and back to fuzzy on component input (obviously), but check HDMI and son of a gun it was back.

Before I left I switched out to the actual Tivo issued component cables and now both component and HDMI were working :confused:

So all this long winded post, I want to know if a faulty component cable can really actually effect an HDMI connection?

Has anyone ever heard of such a thing?

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Like I said with the old Tivo, I was never able to get the HDMI connection back, so just for my own FYI, could the faulty component cable actually permanently disable the HDMI port?

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FYI

I need to have both connected so we (mostly my wife) can watch TV using TV speakers and not need to power on the AVR at all.

And I need HDMI for full video switching through the AVR.

Thanks for letting me ramble (I got to cut down on the caffeine :o )

It's quite possible that the STB's software is designed to not allow component and HDMI to be output at the same time. The idea is that if HDMI is used, then the STB can output all content (included protected content such as HD movies) because HDMI is a secure connection. Since all the analog connections (such as component) do not have secure encryption, they are often disabled.

It's quite possible that the STB's software is designed to not allow component and HDMI to be output at the same time. The idea is that if HDMI is used, then the STB can output all content (included protected content such as HD movies) because HDMI is a secure connection. Since all the analog connections (such as component) do not have secure encryption, they are often disabled.
Thanks for answering.

I had both connected and working fine for 6 months.

Since I was now going to be using the component more often I thought I might increase the pq slightly with newer more expensive cables.

I have both working on my exchange Tivo S3 (which had display issues and is being returned) with the Tivo issued cables. :confused:

This is all really a non-issue now, but I was still curious.

If a certain function is working one day on a set top box, then not working the next, my guess is that the set top box firmware auto-updated itself to change the function. The good thing about a set top box is that they will automatically update themselves with new firmware, but this can also be a bad thing in that users do not have control over this.

If a certain function is working one day on a set top box, then not working the next, my guess is that the set top box firmware auto-updated itself to change the function. The good thing about a set top box is that they will automatically update themselves with new firmware, but this can also be a bad thing in that users do not have control over this.
That is very true. There are some issues going on with the current firmware update. They are not HDMI related, but a definite example of an automatic firmware upgrade causing issues.


Hopefully I will have no issues when my new new box arrives.

Thanks again :)