HDMI and Motorola PVR box
cfh
Newbie

I've had my FiOS service since early July and have been mostly pleased though there have been some maddening moments. The biggest problem I've had is the annoying blackouts that last several seconds on HD channels. This is an intermitent occurence, but last night it got particularly bad, as in it was happening every couple of minutes. I was told one time by Verizon tech support that this was a problem with the cable box and that he thought it had been addressed. Clearly not.

So, this time I was a bit peeved and called Verizon and waded through their tech support system, tricking it to let me actually talk to a human. This system must be maddening to those who don't know how to get around it. I was warned that if I wanted to talk to an actual person that the wait was long. In reality, it took me only seconds once I waited my way through the absurd tech support recorded labyrinth.  I was told that the problem is my HDMI cable. He said they are notoriously unreliable and don't work well with the Motorola PVR box Verizon use and recommended I switch to a component cable.

I was not happy because I run this signal through an AVR, so it's quite a pain to make this change. Fortunately I had the cables (Verizon did not volunteer to send me new ones). Once I made this change, I had no more blackout problems and the picture seems to be just as good. I've since read up on component vs. HDMI. The advice is inconclusive and HDMI hardly is rated way ahead of component. Sure, I have more cables now to deal with, but the picture is much more reliable. This problem must only apply to the PVR box because I use HDMI successfully with our second TV hooked to a non-PVR box.

So my question is: Why doesn't Verizon tell you this in the first place? They even hooked it up with an HDMI cable! I suppose this could be AVR and I've not tried going straight from the cable box to the TV with an HDMI cable. I may try this just for fun. I switched to VZ from Comcast and never had this kind of a problem using the same equipment, so I doubt it's my AVR. 

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Re: HDMI and Motorola PVR box
Keyboards
Master - Level 3
If you look through this and other fora you will find that the problem is with the HDMI handshake.  There are certain TV / STB combinations that seem most susceptable, but it can happen with any.  It is not a cable issue, but a timing issue between the STB and the device it is hooked up to.  And yes it can also be caused when hooked through an AVR. 
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