Sony Bravia loses connection to UPC HD box

Spoon Fed

Hi, I have a Sony Bravia 40 inch HDTV and recently upgraded to UPC HD box. Got the engineer to hook it up initially and all was working fine. However, about a week later I turned on the tv and nothing came up. The television stopped receiving the UPC box. I went through the input menu and saw that the HDMI link was there all right but when I selected it nothing came up. I also have a blue ray dvd player hooked up with HDMi cable and it finds that no issue.

I switched over to scart to get the TV working. Then after a few days, I plugged the HDMI into the back of the TV and presto UPC was back, only to disappear again a week later.
The only thing I am doing is turning the TV off from the remote, nothing else. Then when I turn the TV back on from the remote it loses UPC. I have had the box replaced already, I have had a Sony engineer out to have a look at the TV and he gave me a better insulated HDMI cable, but to no avail, the TV lost UPC again yesterday.

Can anyone help?
thanks

KeRbDoG

Spoon Fed wrote: »

Hi, I have a Sony Bravia 40 inch HDTV and recently upgraded to UPC HD box. Got the engineer to hook it up initially and all was working fine. However, about a week later I turned on the tv and nothing came up. The television stopped receiving the UPC box. I went through the input menu and saw that the HDMI link was there all right but when I selected it nothing came up. I also have a blue ray dvd player hooked up with HDMi cable and it finds that no issue.

I switched over to scart to get the TV working. Then after a few days, I plugged the HDMI into the back of the TV and presto UPC was back, only to disappear again a week later.
The only thing I am doing is turning the TV off from the remote, nothing else. Then when I turn the TV back on from the remote it loses UPC. I have had the box replaced already, I have had a Sony engineer out to have a look at the TV and he gave me a better insulated HDMI cable, but to no avail, the TV lost UPC again yesterday.

Can anyone help?
thanks

Think this question is better asked in the Cable forum, an admin should move it

Spoon Fed

Ok thanks I've moved it

zaphodbeeb

...if it isn't, and the UPC box was somehow inadvertantly getting switched to full HD, you might well get the issue you describe.

I'd have thought that you'd get an error message along the lines of "Unsupported mode" or some such thing.

Just a suggestion...

liamf

That will be a UPC box software bug.
For sure.

Complain to UPC and give them the TV model.

They won't *do* anothing about it, but it will make you feel better.

liamf

You could also try, for the fun, the next time this happens, putting the UPC box into standby and taking it out of standby again while the TV is set to the HDMI link that the box is connected to, if you see what I mean.

This might make it renegotiate the HDMI link with the TV and fix itself temporarily.

Most likely it has a bug in it's handling of the TV going into/out of standby.

Such things are unfortunately rather common.

SteM

We have the exact same problem with our Toshiba. Everything worked fine for about a month and then we started having problems. We had a UPC engineer at the weekend out about something different, I showed him this problem and he just said - yeah, I've seen this before and there's no fix for this. Then he shrugged his shoulders, scratched his head and left. Genius.

whatever1971

I have just cancelled my UPC HD subscription because of this problem. I have a Sony Bravia TV and am on my third UPC CIsco HD box in 6 months. All have had this problem. The last one worked most of the time for a couple of months but then started to get less and less reliable. Similar to other posters here I have a Bluray drive that has never had an issue and i have tried swapping around the cables
Two weeks ago I connected it via Scart(obviously not getting HD) and its been working fine since. Rang them today and they didnt argue when I told them why I was cancelling so I guess they know this is a problem.

I've also never been happy with the ESPN or Setanta HD sports channels as you gte "noise" and a broken picture every 5 or so seconds during live games. Discovery, History and BBC HD never had this problem.

Seems crazy that they are just giving up on customers. Surely they should realise that HD customers are the main ones they should be after as they will pay for premium service.
Whats really annoying me is that I waited to buy a good quality HD TV until UPC had HD available in my apartment block and now I'm back watching everything in SD

liamf

This will just be poor s/w integration on their set-top boxes.

To be fair to their box maker, making the box work with all possible models of TV is a highly non-trivial affair and they'll only do it if UPC make them. Which, apparently, they're not doing :-)

And if they have taken the approach of having the identical s/w on their boxes in all markets (which would be prudent) then they will be prioritising those TV models which are most common in their largest markets.

Plus they will be limiting the number of s/w rollouts on their boxes per year too.

The current generation new Sky HD units are the most compatible with different types of HD TV. Not that this helps you much. Sorry.

Spoon Fed

whatever1971 wrote: »

I have just cancelled my UPC HD subscription because of this problem. I have a Sony Bravia TV and am on my third UPC CIsco HD box in 6 months. All have had this problem. The last one worked most of the time for a couple of months but then started to get less and less reliable. Similar to other posters here I have a Bluray drive that has never had an issue and i have tried swapping around the cables
Two weeks ago I connected it via Scart(obviously not getting HD) and its been working fine since. Rang them today and they didnt argue when I told them why I was cancelling so I guess they know this is a problem.

I've also never been happy with the ESPN or Setanta HD sports channels as you gte "noise" and a broken picture every 5 or so seconds during live games. Discovery, History and BBC HD never had this problem.

Seems crazy that they are just giving up on customers. Surely they should realise that HD customers are the main ones they should be after as they will pay for premium service.
Whats really annoying me is that I waited to buy a good quality HD TV until UPC had HD available in my apartment block and now I'm back watching everything in SD

Update: My wife accosted a UPC engineer the other day who was working outside the house and challenged him on the issue. He was extremely helpful. He said he knew about the issue and then proceeded to ring his boss who is responsible for training the UPC engineers. She spoke directly to the manager (on the UPC guy's mobile) who said yes it was a known issue particularly with Sony Bravia's but unfortunately there was nothing being done about it at present.

So in one way comforting to know that UPC are aware of the issue. Still no help with the problem.

Now, when it happens to me I put the TV on standby and then turn it on again, and keep doing that until it picks up the UPC signal which it usually does.

whatever1971

After I cancelled I emailed them saying why I had cancelled. They replied claiming that its all to do with the cable that was supplied originally and they now have different cables that work better.
They said they will send me out one.

I actually don't think it will help as when it first happened I swapped around the cable with the hdmi cable I got with my TV/Bluray which is a fairly decent gold plated hdmi 1.3 and i still had problems.
Still wonder why their first line technicians haven't been told how to deal with people coming on to complain about this. I've dealt with four of them and none of them knew of any issues with the HD boxes.

whatever1971

oh and they also said
"UPC is working on upgrading the HD digital experience with new channels and new equipment"
The sooner the better is all I can say

liamf

Yes, that sounds just about right

Putting that TV into standby and taking it out again forces the UPC box and the TV to renegotiate the link between them.

And, eventually, they will get it right. And it will last for a while until the moderately crappy UPC box gets confused. And then you have to start again.

Possibly putting the UPC box into standby and taking it out again repeatedly would do the same thing. What you want to do is force the box to renegotiate the HDMI/HDCP link ... by putting one or other end of the link into standby, or plugging out the HDMI cable and plugging it back in again ...

Not ideal but so long as it only does this once every couple of days, not the end of the world either.

Ghost Rider

I thought I had a solution for this, but apparently not...

Ghost Rider

No, wait! I've found the source of the problem! It's to do with interference between the telly (a Sony Bravia) and the UPC remote control. This is caused by the TV's use of a light sensor in power saving mode. Here's how to switch it off: go to Options, then into Power Saving. From there, select Standard, then scroll down to Light Sensor and set that to off.

Ghost Rider wrote: »

I thought I had a solution for this, but apparently not...