I just installed Lion on my Mac mini and my TV no longer receives a signal over HDMI. I've tried a bunch of different cobinations of restarting the TV and computer without any luck. Without a display, I can't use Screen Sharing to try chaning any of the prefrences. Does anyone have a solution to this problem? Thanks.
For everyone who is having HDTV display and digital audio output problems take the advice of a few of the other posters here and go out and purchase Gefen HDMI Detective Plus. It retails for $129 but Amazon has it for sale for around $80. It will fix your Mac HDMI out video and audio problems period. Yeah it ***** you have to buy it but if you have the HDMI problems it was designed to fix you already have spent several thousand dollars on computer and home theater equipment so what is another $80 to keep everything working right.
By way of background, I have a late 2010 Quadcore I7 Imac, which also doubles as a HTPC for a 7.1 speaker set up in my loft with my Denon 4308CI amp and Panasonic HDTV (via a long 100 ft HDMI run). I use the Imac bluetooth keyboard and trackpad in the living room to control the Imac when viewing on my HDTV. The set up worked great with Snow Leopard until the 10.6.8 update killed my digital audio. I reverted to 10.6.7 to fix the issue until Lion 10.7.1 was released and I read on another Apple thread that the HDMI out issues had been solved. When I upgraded I lost both HDMI video and audio and I was hoping that 10.7.2 would solve the issues but it did not.
Anyhow, I was getting ready to go back to 10.6.7 again but read this whole thread for solutions and stumbled on the Gefen hardware solution. After doing some research it seems that many HTPCs have HDMI out problems with software updates and AV receivers and not just Apple. I bought the product, spoke to Gefen tech support before the set up as their instrucitons are a little unclear but after that I set up the product in no time and now everything is working perfectly once again. Best of all, I don't have to worry now about future software updates killing my HDMI out video and audio again.
BTW, if you use a AV receiver with your Imac just use one of the preset Gefen generic codes at set up as storing your HDTV's EDID in the Gefen may not allow you to push multi channel digital audio as well as video from your Imac.
Try unplugging the HDMI cable from your computer. Restart the computer, then re-connect HDMI. Worked for me.
I just tried switching to my PS3 HDMI cable... and VOLIA! I got instant connection. If this simply is an HDMI cable issue I will be so pleased! Time will tell.
Thanks for the tip.
I've got the same issue... Mac Mini wont boot to HDMI and Screen Sharing wont link in since Lion upgrade......
A makeshift solution is unplugging the HDMI during boot up, give it 30sec's - 1min...plug it back it and then it should come up.... works for me for now.....
hopefully someone has a more permanent solution or mac solves the issue ASAP....
Cheers
MBA, the good thing is that it has something to do with
Lion alone. What I mean by this is that Apple didn't sneak
some firmware update into Lion.
See if it works by starting in safe mode. Power down and
wait at least 10 seconds. Then power back up again and as
soon as you here the start up hold down the shift key until
a screen with the spinning wheel comes up (if it does).
This turns off any sort of special extensions and drivers.
If it does end up booting, then can go from there to
figure what may be the problem. Worth a shot.
Well, I just got around to updating my Mini to Lion. And
guess what? Had the infamous no signal. Played around
with pulling power, zapping PRAM, unplug and plug routine
with out results. For grins and giggles, I took a Display Port
to HDMI adapter and tried the connection that way.
Guess what? With the display port adapter to HDMI I got video!
Got through the initial boot stuff and to my dektop and things are
functional.
Here's were things get weird. I shut down, plugged the HDMI cable
back in directly, rebooted and it worked. Then shut down again.
Waited for several minutes and rebooted. Black screen!!!!
Forced shut down. Plugged it back together with Display
adapter. Restarted got spinning cursor gray screen then
black, forever. Forced a power down. Started up zapping PRAM,
reboot after zapping PRAM brought screen back to desktop.
Haven't shut down yet waiting to repair permissions, while I can.
Just got off the phone with Apple Care again, they say there is no known issue officially yet but asked that I tell everyone here to call in and report the same issue and talk to a senior advisor and give them your TV make and model so they can submit it all to Engineering so a update can generated for Lion to fix issues we are having.
Apple Care: (800) 275-2273
Just to see what you are doing, you could try screensharing from another Mac. It's what I do to reboot my Mini when the TV won't display anything. At the very least it'd let you see if there are any crashes or errors on screen and let you reboot it normally.
Thank you. It was already on when I went in there. I must have turned it on a while ago. I couldn't get it to work on my Pro. I finally hauled out my tv stand, almost broke the tv trying to get the HDMI cable plugged into it directly, but finally I have a display now. It will not work through my Denon receiver. Plugging it in directly to the Pioneer Elite saved the day. However, now I've got a nasty black wire dangling from it. The main wire is inside the wall. So much for that.
I went into the display setting and saw something strange. It defaulted to PAL instead of NTSC. I wonder if this could be causing the issue. I know when I set it up originally it was set to NTSC. Lion must have changed it.
What refresh rate do you guys show?
Yesterday morning finally I Found out a permanent? solution to my HDMI problem. And it is the same as you describe above. I found out that if I boot my Mac mini at 720p then there was not any HDMI signal. When I changed the resolution to 1080p boot my Mac mini and everything was fine. If I change the resolution after boot and forget it at 720p (1280X720) and then shut down or restart the Mac mini the no signal on HDMI problem comes again.
I believe that is the solution for some of you guys as described at woodmeister50 and my post.
Give it a try..and good luck until an official fix from apple.
I have the same problem, however I found that if force a shutdown and then turn the mini back on as well as turn the tv off and back on, the screen does come back. Probably will not turn the mini off for a few days to see if a real fix via update comes out.
Took the "easy step" -> erased the drive and re-installed Snow Leopard with the original Mac Mini disks. Back to good as new. Working as my media server just fine again.
May try Lion again once this HDMI issue resolved 🙂
I think the issue is worse than HDMI handshaking. I cannot access it through Screen Sharing either when it starts going squirly. The CPU runs hot, the computer will not even boot up. At 3 am, the TV is not on. So there would be no handshaking taking place. Last weekend it rebooted 100% OK. This weekend it failed. Then even after turning the TV on it would not work. It appears to be an issue with the Operating System that goes beyond the HDMI handshaking, but I could be wrong.
Anyhow I'm back to Snow Leopard and after spending almost a full day reinstalling everything and restoring things from backup, I'm happy again. I've also learned a valuable lesson.
This worked for me. I'm using a 2010 mini attached through a Denon AV amp to an Epson 8350 projector. I would have to zap the PRAM on each reboot in order to get video back. Now if I can just figure out why I'm also losing HDMI stereo audio (only stereo, other digital formats pass through just fine) my home theatre setup will almost be working again. I know I could go back to Snow Leopard but I needed to use this machine to test other Lion stuff so I had to take the plunge with it.
Apple has some serious bug zapping in their near future WRT Lion.
I had the same issues here with both the latest 2011 mini and one from 2010 both with Lion. My HDMI would do fine going directly into my Pioneer 50 plasma. But when put through the HDMI of my receiver, I'd get flickering, black screens, and inconsistant resolutions. After tons of research I found the Gefen HDMI Detective Plus. It's job is to isolate and store the EDID - electronic identification of a display (possible resolutions and frequencies). The little device remembers the source requirement and will keep it from searching EDIDs. It's expensive at $129, but it saved my home theater experience with my new mini under Lion. It works folks.
Passing through a receiver through hdmi can be a problem for all modern OSs. I had the same issue with snow leopard. However, when connecting directly from the mini to the 50" Pioneer, I had no problems with either Lion or Snow Leopard. At least in my case, I cannot blame Apple. There's nothing on the box that says it will be compatible with all home theater receivers. Connecting a computer to a home theater is still a geeky endeavor, not for the sort that doesn't have patience. However for those who had it working under SL, and not Lion, I understand your frustration. But, it was only $29, and you can always go back to snow leopard without losing much.
No Signal on HDMI TV After Lion Upgrade
