Fried 2nd Pioneer Elite Receiver - Help Needed

Hi guys,

New to the forum, but was hoping there are some techs that can shed light on a very frustrating situation I'm in. I will try to make this as short as possible, but I want to include as many details as I can in hope of somebody being able to help.

Last night, my setup was a Pioneer Elite plasma display, a Pioneer Elite SC-07 receiver, DirecTv, Apple TV, Denon Blu Ray, PS3 and a Wii, along with a Monster Clean Power unit and Monster Surge unit (not sure model #'s, but the huge expensive things), Sunfire Sub, 7 Klipsch speakers. Everything was working fine and has been since I first setup the receiver 3-4 months ago.

Brother (more knowledgeable than I at this stuff) comes over to run through the receiver speaker setup and double check I have everything on the optimal settings.

Somewhere between going through the setup, installing a cool components fan, and tinkering with the Monster surge box the video to the display goes out never to return again.

StarPower came out and tested the display, which was fine, and concluded that the HDMI control card (?) must have been fried somehow, possibly by static. They took the receiver and I'm waiting to hear back.

Tonight, I hooked up an older, barely used Pioneer Elite VSX-94TXH receiver, and only attached the DirecTv, AppleTV and PS3 to the HDMI ports. Went through speaker setup just fine, watched AppleTV for about an hour, and somewhere between that and trying to play PS3 the identical thing happened, I have audio but no video. Just like the other receiver, if I plug in the mic to do a setup now, the menu no longer appears on the TV so that's telling me it's the same problem.

I have some amateur theories/possibilities about what might be the cause:

- On the cool components fan there's a small temp gauge attached, and one end of it is exposed (not sure if intentional) and you can see a circuit board. On both systems this was sitting on top of the receiver.

- PS3. In searching online I've seen a few cases where a PS3 fried some equipment, but it usually involved a large spark which didn't occur in my case. Strangely, when troubleshooting my first receiver, I hooked the PS3 directly to HDMI port on my TV and after running the PS3 for 5 minutes, received a "PS3 system is too hot and will now shut down" message, which I've never ever seen, despite playing it for 3-4 hours straight without any problems in the past.

- Apple Airport Express, I recently plugged one in right behind equipment rack, about 3-4 days before first receiver went out, and then after my setup tonight was working fine, plugged the AE into the wall. Shortly after this is when the video out on 2nd receiver.

- Switching HDMI cables in and out of different ports with the system on. I'm worried that this might be an obvious no-no, and I'm guilty of it in the past, but never caused any problems. I only recently read in my manual that the receiver should be unplugged when plugging in an HDMI cable.

- Faulty HDMI cables. I'm using either Monster M1000's or AudioQuests, so quality is high and since audio appears fine, I doubt it would be a cable doing this.

Any input as to what could be the problem, or any suggestions to avoid this in the future will be welcomed with arms wide open.

Thanks,
Jeff

Thanks for the replies.

Michael:
I figured the Airport Express would be a long shot, I've many Apple products and they all have worked fine without any trouble. The tech people that came to look at the receiver tested the TV then looked at the receiver and concluded it was a problem with that. They ran my DirecTV box directly into the TV and it worked fine. But I supposed over time the TV might be damaging the receiver. It's fairly new too, and haven't had any problems.

I haven't used any cooling fans until I hooked up one to the first receiver, which went out soon afterward. My brother is the one that uses fans on everything, and gave a large one to use. I set it up on the 2nd receiver that went out, so I'm still wondering about that. Attached to the fan is the Advanced LT Controller by Cool Components (I can't insert URLs yet). This has an open circuit board at one end and, while having hardly any currant, made me nervous setting it on top of the metal receiver case.


tcfish19:
My equipment is plugged into a Monster HTS 5100, which is then plugged into a Monster Voltage Stabilizer AVS 2000.

My brother was adjusting some of the switches/buttons on the PowerCenter because it was reading 119.5 instead of 120. Probably 30 minutes later is when first receiver went out, and this same setup was used on 2nd receiver too.

Thanks...

Been thinking about the possibilty of the TV causing the problem, and that could explain why when I plugged my PS3 directly into an HDMI port on the TV the PS3 all of a sudden said it was too hot and needed to shut down, which it's never done in the past.

UPDATE:

Well it turns out neither receiver was actually damaged, but it was the HDMI ports on the TV that were going out, and eventually went out completely. It took a lot of troubleshooting and testing, plus a technician looking at the first receiver, to figure this out. The component output on the TV worked fine, and I was able to get a picture randomly when I would plug a device directly into an HDMI port on the TV, which added to the confusion as to what was actually the problem.

My old TV was taken away for repair, and is still under warranty so that's good. What's even better is now there's a Pioneer Kuro 500m setting in it's place I bought for $1900 new. The old display will go in another room since we've only had 1 TV in the house, and not having a backup is very difficult livin'.

Anyways, thanks for the help and pointers...