Apple TV and Toshiba HDMI Green Screen of Death
(NOTE: Be sure to Digg and Furl this article via the links at the bottom, so that as many people as possible can be informed about this possible bug, before spending $299 for an Apple TV)
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Ok, maybe death is a bit to strong of a word. But annoyance just doesn’t seem to cut it. Here’s the story so far …
When my Apple TV arrived early Tuesday morning, I couldn’t wait to get it set up and start enjoying all of my iTunes content on my HD television set (a Toshiba Theaterwide 46″ HD set). Not patient enough to wire things up right (and the fact that I was lacking a HDMI cable at the time) I borrowed the component cable connection from my DVD player, and hooked the Apple TV up to that connection. At the first power up, I could tell I’d made a good investment with the Apple TV - all of my podcasts, music, TV shows, and movies started coming down to the unit … and the quality met my expectations.
So, over the weekend I decided it was time to wire things up right, so I stopped by the local BestBuy and purchased an Acoustic Research 6′ HDMI cable for ($59.95) so that I could give the DVD player its component connection again, and leverage the HDMI connection on the Apple TV and my television. I’d never used the HDMI connection before, and I was quite excited about the idea of one simple cable that carries all the hi-def audio and video. Smart idea…
(Note: I know that I could have gotten a cheaper HDMI cable if I’d simply purchased online from XYZ electronics, or whatever - I know the market for these cables is overly inflated … which is why I didn’t leave BestBuy with the Monster Cable HDMI at twice the price)
I took apart everything that was hooked up to the TV, and then rewired it from the ground up. One by one, I worked my way through the video inputs were operating as expected. Antenna feed? Check. TiVo? Check. X-Box? Check. HD feed from Comcast? Check. DVD Player? Check. Apple TV? Erm … uh … well, this is what I was greeted with:
A lovely shade of mint green, whever there should be black. And since so much of the Apple TV interface is black, it’s rather overpowering to look at. Puzzled by this, I figured maybe one of the cables wasn’t seated properly … so I disconnected the HDMI cable at both ends, and re-seated it. Nope — same problem.
So this left me puzzled. Obviously, the Apple TV had worked just fine on the component connections — unfortunately, my TV only has two sets of component inputs … which I use for the HD cable tuner, and my DVD player. So I really had a need to understand what might be going on with the HDMI interface so I started searching around on the Internet a bit.
Seems as though there are a few people that have reported strange HDMI behavior with their television sets, similar to what I was experiencing. So, at least I knew I wasn’t alone … but I wasn’t finding an answer to the problem. Finally, in this post, a suggestion could be found — power up the TV first, then power up the Apple TV second.
Since the Apple TV doesn’t have a proper power button - either on the remote, or the main unit itself - this is rather annoying and required disconnecting the power cable and reconnecting it. A hard boot, if you will. So, I gave that a shot - I turned on the TV, selected the HDMI interface (still showing Apple TV in its lovely green shade) and pulled the plug on the Apple TV. When I plugged it in, I was amazed by what I saw - it had gone back to its proper black background display!
Sure enough, consulting page 15 of the PDF manual for my television, this little “note” is printed on the side of the page …
Admittedly, I don’t know a whole lot about the HDMI specification - but it would seem that there’s some sort of “handshaking” that needs to take place between the display and the device … and by not following the proper sequencing, that handshaking gets a bit messed up. Ok, so now I had the display back to normal. The real question was, though - would my TV remember if I powered it off and then on again, or even just switched to another input and then back to HDMI again? The answer, sadly, is a “no” on both counts. Once I’ve got the Apple TV running in its normal black display mode - I’ve got to stay there, or go through the hard boot exercise to get it back again.
In a word, this sucks. I’ll certainly call Apple support on this one and see what they say about it (and will report my findings here on my blog, so check back if you’re interested in seeing what happens) but this is one of those issues that can easily fall into the “inbetween” area where one vendor can simply point a finger at another. Initially, I assumed it was likely the Toshiba’s fault … but then it occurred to me, who would have more experience implementing the HDMI specification properly - Apple Computer or a HD television manufacturer? And in the final few posts of the thread mentioned above, a few interesting bits of information can be found:
“It [presumably a Time-Warner cable HD tuner box] was working fine for several months, then all of a sudden, started getting that horrible green tint when powering on. Don’t know what happened, I assumed that TWC downloaded some sort of patch or upgrade to the box.”
Which tells me that it can be the box itself, not a problem with the TV set. And then this final post in the thread:
“…some source devices with less robust firmware have issues with timing out with HDCP authentication or other handshakes when the TV is off. Technically, all sources should attempt to authenticate HDCP indefinitely as the spec requires, but there are some devices that will timeout this process, thus requiring the source to be power cycled in order to force it to re-authenticte.”
Interestingly enough, that 2nd quote comes from a user named HDMI_org on AVS Forums, with a tag line of “HDMI Organization”. So maybe there’s some actual credibility to that assessment.
A similar thread, with an XBox user experiencing similar problems via HDMI, can be found here.
If Apple can do anything, a future firmware update would certainly be nice to fix this problem. Certainly, I’m not the only person on the planet with this television … and given how many components are OEM’d across multiple manufacturers - I’m sure there are many other product lines that have the potential to exhibit this behavior. If the problem is in Toshiba itself, I’ll probably have to just live with it until I get a better television later in the year (because no one is taking my Apple TV back unless they pry it out of my cold, dead hands).
If you are thinking of buying an Apple TV to use with your HDMI connection, and if you’ve never used your HDMI connection before - you might want to consult your user manual and see if it includes a note like mine does above. If it does, you might want to have a backup plan ready to stick with component inputs instead. Unfortunately, since I have no component inputs left, seems as though I’m stuck with the situation for a while.
Check back for updates after I call Apple and log a case for this problem. I’ll let you know what they say.
Here’s a YouTube video showing the entire situation, if you’re interested …
April 1st UPDATE! I’ve found a workaround for the Green Screen bug, and you can read about it here at my 10-day review of Apple TV.
Have you tested your TV with other HDMI signals, and similarly have you tested your Apple TV on another HDTV with HDMI? I just wonder if one of the two might be faulty in any way. Would be very unfortunate if this is a widespread problem.
Does the AppleTV turn off with the remote if you hold down the Play/Pause button like my MacBook does?
As you stated, this is an HDMI deficiency, not an AppleTV problem. Keep your raging ‘EVERYTHING SHOULD WORK, OR ELSE APPLE!!” crap out of their call center and focus your nerd rage at the consortium of garbage responsible for this HDMI fiasco.
It’s a horrible interface, not well tested, with incompatible revisions and all the makings of being replaced very soon.
@chris d - Unfortunately, I don’t have any other HDMI source devices, nor do I have another set to test against. I might have to poll some of my co-workers and see who has a HDMI set at home that I might be able to try this against. But I don’t think it’s either device individually, I think that only both - in certain combinations - seem to miss the HDMI spec.
@adam - Nope. Holding down the play/pause button only puts the Apple TV to sleep. It’s not a full power-down sequence, so it doesn’t fix the problem
@as you said - Not quite sure where to start with that all, but as I’d said in my post, no one is getting my Apple TV back unless they pry it out of my cold dead hands … even with this bug. I like it too much. But your post raised my curiosity about the HDMI spec in general, and I’m reading up a bit more. Seems as though there’s a bit of controversy. Perhaps you can provide us with some good links to what seems to be wrong with the spec? Interestingly enough, it seems as though the specification was developed by a joint consortium of Hitachi, Panasonic, Philips, Sony and Toshiba Corporation (to name a few). So that makes the question even more interesting - who implemented wrong in this case … Apple, or Toshiba?
I have the aTV, a Toshiba HD DVD, Verizion DVR and a Pioneer DVD all playing
to a Optoma HD81 1080i front projector in my home theater.
I have seen so many issues with HDMI and the power up sequence that I fell
the interface is worthless for most applications. The concept is great - get rid off the cables - but the implementation is really weak. If I power up the Toshiba before the Optoma is ready to accept a signal I get a green screen or sometimes a
noise screen like I have no antenna on an old analog tv.
Only when I power the sources down and back on am I able to get back to watching content.
The issue is HDMI not the manufacturer of the components. Complain to
the jerks who thrust this half baked standard on us all!
Have you tried a new HDMI cable?
You could buy one of those extension-cables for the electricty with a switch, you wouldn’t need to pull out the connector.
Pressing Menu and ´-´ (volume down) should reboot Apple TV.
Not a problem with my Sony.
Hey, I have a 42″ Olevia LCD T.V. and I ran into the same problem. At first I thought it was my HDMI port so I switched it to another one and the same thing happende. So I switched cables and still the same thing so I ended up returning it and exchanging it with a new one, but yap you got it the same thing. I’m glad im not the only one running into that problem.
@John - Yeah, that’s what I’m quickly finding out about HDMI, especially after talking with a few friends that do professional home theater installs … they don’t speak very highly of it. Lesson learned.
@Nick - Haven’t gone out to get a new cable, as the cable obviously works (even through a 2 hour long movie) if I power things up in the right sequence. So I don’t think it’s a cable issue.
@Cenk - Funny you should mention that, that’s exactly what I was thinking of doing.
@RaT - I was hoping that might work, but that puts the Apple TV into a recovery mode. Which, ironically enough, comes up with the black screen just fine. Then when you exit the recovery mode, it goes back to green - this time, even for the Apple TV intro animation. Go figure.
@Jbatzel - Thanks for the feedback, sorry to hear you’re in the same boat as me. Sounds like you’ve swapped out everything but the TV by now … which obviously isn’t really practical for anyone. Oh well, I guess I’m going to have to live with this until I get a better set with more component inputs later this summer.
There’s a similar issue with my Sony XBR2 40″. In my case at random intervals, the whole picture flickers to a black screen and back again. I suspect that’s probably the same HDCP timing problem but in my case it can start happening at any time…
Post in the HDMI forum on AVSforum. HDMI_Org is the standards/licensing body, and they take this stuff seriously.
Does changing the Apple TV resolution fix it? LIke
going to atv settings and changing the resolution from 1080i to 720p
and back again fix the problem?
Hi,
I have the same problem with HDMI.
If I press the play/pause button 6 seconds to make aTV go to sleep.. then watch TV..
After a while, I can switch back to HDMI(aTV), I get a green screen. then I press play/pause button to make the aTV interface back on… still green…
The easly way to fix it with out rebooting aTV, is to go to your setting screen.
pick a different screen resolution. The HDMI will talk to each other and will fix the green screen. It will promote you the new res and ask if it’s ok or cancel. Just click cancel and aTV won’t switch resolution for you. Everything is back to normal without rebooting.
[…] the great news - I seem to have found a work-around for my HDMI green-screen bug, that I discussed in my last blog entry. I had mentioned in the video recording that I’d made […]
Just wanted to let everyone know who might be interested, that I’ve found a work-around to this problem for now… you can read about it at my 10-day review here:
http://dougtoombs.com/2007/04/01/apple-tv-first-ten-days-review/
Thanks to everyone for the comments and suggestions on how to fix this problem!
I’m wondering if John, who left a message in March, has had any more luck with his Optoma HD81. I have one and I’ve had a few problems with HDMI. I have a Direct TV H-20, a Toshiba A20 HD DVD, and a Samsung BDP1000 Blue Ray. The signal on my Direct TV kept cutting out on me every 15 minutes or so until I switched to component video, my HD DVD signal only has issues cutting out every once in a while and it only happens when I play non-HD DVD content, and my Blue Ray never has any problems whatsoever. Optoma told me to purchase an HDMI repeater, which I did and it did nothing but improve my picture quality slightly. John, you’ve had your projector a little longer than I have and if you’ve found a fix then I would love to hear what you’ve managed to find out.
I am a professional AV installer and we have tones of problems with HDMI. There is a large lie that HDMi provides reacher blacks better picture etc.
HDMI needs handshaking and was invented to help with DRM. REgular component cables can send 720 p & 180i no problem. Really does anyone need 1080p? NO not unless you are using a very large screen and projector.
We have buckets of problems with HDMI. Not defending Apple. THere are lots of combinations of TV, Video device and cable that cause the same problem or worse.
Scrap the HDMI and go back to component. Unless Apple only send 720p over HDMI then you are fine.
To call HDMI a “standard” is quite a stretch. Right now, HDMI is more of a cesspit of incompatible junk. The fact that this horrible mess is “the future” of AV components is pretty disheartening. Maybe they’ll get this ironed out after awhile, but I recommend a large amount of caution before buying any HDMI devices right now. I haven’t found a single component out there that doesn’t leave some rather important part of the spec (audio, 1080p, bitstream output, etc.) unimplemented. The pooch has been bought dinner and a movie and thoroughly screwed on this one.
NEED HELP!!! I have the same death green screen on my Samsung 50 Plasma when connecting to my Nvidia 8600 GT through DVI output - HDMI. Turning on the TV first, then the PC didn´t work out. The opposite neither. I guess there really is a handshaking on the hdmi connections because at first I got perfect image. Some days later, after turning off the pc, the green screen appeared and nothing could change it ( I´ve tried changing resolution, color output, horiz/vert sync, power on/ off…). I guess that if I could get a total reset on my TV, probably would help, but this also isn´t possible. Does anyone have any ideal on how to solve this puzzle. Many thxs in advance.
thanks a lot i had the same problem
i just turned on my playstaion first then my tv