Last week I grabbed a new 5000T from JL. After hooking it up to my Yamaha YSP4100 sound bar and powering it on after firing-up my TV, I noticed that I'd lost audio from the bar. A quick power cycle sorted that, then I went ahead and set-up the 5000T without further ado. A bit later, wanting to show my wife the new kit, I powered-up my LG TV, which uses an HDMI-ARC connection to the Yamaha but the bar failed to power-up. After a lot of messing around I found that if I pulled mains power from the 5000T the TV and bar would work fine. Thinking that there might be an issue with the bar, I connected the 5000T to the LG and ended-up with exactly the same result -- soundbar MIA.
Altering the CEC setting made no difference, and although I was tempted to get a Lindy CEC blocker to try my good lady wife said that she'd rather return the 5000T for a refund. To a certain extent, I agreed with her, and the total loss of the ARC connection did make me wonder if I had a duff 5000T sample, and I didn't want to risk possible damage to the TV or bar, or both.
Anyway, with the 5000T en route to JL, at the weekend I grabbed a cheaper 1800T from Argos, and set it up in exactly the same way as I had done with the 5000T. No obvious problems. Sunday night, watching Top Gear whilst the 1800T was recording, we both noticed that the HDMI input port indicator on the front of the bar would intermittently flicker on and off. No biggie, but a bit irritating. We then went on to watch some recordings on the 1800T without issue.
Last night We went to our local model railway club meeting, and on getting home I woke the TV up from standby to be greeted again by an absence of soundbar. The 1800T was recording at the time. I let it finish its recording, then tried the TV again, which then woke the soundbar up as normal.
Can anyone shed light on the above please? I know that Humax kit can be a bit flaky, certainly when it comes to HDMI connectivity issues, but I can't believe that I've been that unlucky.
It seems to me that there's something about Humax Freeview PVRs that my Yamaha doesn't like. Oddly though, I have no issues with anything else routed through it, including a Humax 1100S Freesat PVR! I need to get another PVR soon as my Panasonic is quite old and is showing signs of fatigue. I do have a Manhattan T3-R which is OK, but we do do a lot of time-shifting so a second Freeview PVR is a must. It's not possible to run two Manhattans in the same room as there's no way to change remote control channels, which is a bit of an oversight, to say the least. The 5000T with its 3 tuners seemed ideal. I'm not sure that trying an Aura will help. Would the Lindy CEC blocker have made any difference? Any thoughts or suggestions would be gratefully received.
Cheers, Clem
