TV screen goes blank or flashes a white screen

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TV screen goes blank or flashes a white screen

During playback of movies or TV shows, the TV screen will go blank or it will flash a white fuzzy screen and then the picture will come back. The audio continues uninterrupted. We have reset the unit several times, I bought a new HDMI cable just in case that was the issue and still have the problem.

Another item we have noticed (and it could be related) if you got to video settings, we have the resolution set to 1080p. But from time to time the setting reverts back to 720p.

PowerMac G5, Mac OS X (10.5.6)

Posted on Jan 4, 2009 9:05 AM

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Answer 1

alm99

Level 1

8 points

Jan 25, 2009 5:35 PM in response to JDFink

I am having this issue as well. The screen goes black, no audio or video for about 5-10 seconds. Whatever I am watching continues to play because when the image and sound do come back it as if it never went away.

This happened 4 times in under a minute tonight. I have reset the Apple TV and verified the cable is fine.

Anyone have this issue?

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Answer 2

Jan 26, 2009 2:36 AM in response to JDFink

Technically 1080p requires a category 2 HDMI cable. In many cases a category 1 cable will do but occasionally this may lead to playback issues. The fact that the tv resets itself to 720p tends to tell me your tv is unable to tell your tv that it supports 1080p for whatever reason. This could be cable related or indeed to do with the HDMI card in either the tv or tv, have you tried restarting either of these devices.

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Answer 3

JDFink Author

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Jan 27, 2009 1:09 PM in response to Winston Churchill

Thanks for the info. I actually changed the cable and we are no longer having the issue. Except, the Apple TV still won't change to the 1080p. The set is only a year old. 50" Panasonic VIERA series. It is not a big issue, but would like to be able to view in that format.

The funny thing is, most if not all of the issues have corrected themselves. The biggest issue we originally had was the inability to download or if it did download from the main computer, it was very slow. Now, it works great and we are really enjoying it.

Thanks for the help

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Answer 4

Jan 28, 2009 3:09 AM in response to JDFink

..... Except, the Apple TV still won't change to the 1080p.

It's likely not as bad as you think, if your tv is 1080 then that's what you will be watching whether you have your tv set to upscale the picture to 1080 or whether the tv outputs at 720 and lets the tv upscale to 1080.

The worst scenario for you would be if the tv wasn't as good at upscaling as the tv. This largely depends on how good your tv is.

For example. We have a 50" LG tv in the front room, which is a little wacky since its display is actually something like 1366 x 768, so no matter what resolution we set the tv at the tv will always do some scaling. However it was noted that the tv is actually very good at scaling, indeed it's better than the tv (probably due to it costing c£ 3,000). So if we have a SD file, we get a better picture when the tv outputs at SD than when it outputs at 720, however we can't keep shifting resolutions to match our content so the tv is set at 720 (if it wasn't we would lose much of the quality when we play >SD content.

On the other hand our tv in the bedroom is a 46" Sharp Aquios and its upscaling is lousy. It's so poor that if we watch a SD tv broadcast (upscaled by tv to 1080) live and compare it to a recording of the same broadcast and played through the tv (output at 1080) the recording is noticeably better than the original broadcast.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it all depends on your equipment.

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Answer 5

JDFink Author

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Jan 28, 2009 6:57 AM in response to Winston Churchill

You make very good sense. We spent $3,200 US on our set and it was top rated. I didn't realize about the scaling, but I am new to the plasma technology. Last year we replaced out 32" Sony Trinitron that we had for 14 years. I am still learning a lot.

Thank you so much for all your help and expertise.

Message was edited by: JDFink

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